Rossi laments 'worse than expected' race

The former world champion is now 60 points behind Casey Stoner in the 2007 standings after struggling for grip for a second successive race.

Rossi lacked pace all weekend in the Czech Republic and could only finish seventh at Brno.

"We expected a difficult race today because we knew our potential here wasn't very high after the last two days," he said. "However it was even worse than we expected.

"I tried to keep my rhythm going but, after only seven or eight laps, the tyre started to slide a lot on the right side and from then on I wasn't able to open the throttle.

"Throughout the weekend we have done everything to try to find more traction. We have changed the setting a lot to try to find a way to make the tyre work, but unfortunately during the race we had no grip.

"Also, with the setting we had to use, we had to sacrifice some of our corner speed and this also slowed us down."

Although Yamaha will test at Brno for the next two days, Rossi does not anticipate a swift fix to the team's issues.

"In reality our situation is quite bad and we have a few different problems to deal with," he said.

"We will try to make the best of the next two days of work and to try to find something different for the next few races. We have to wait and see what we find, but for sure it's going to be very difficult.

"This is a very hard moment that we're in. We have six races to go and we just have to work as hard as we can to try to find a way to make some good results."

Rossi has not visited the podium since winning the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of June. He crashed out at the Sachsenring and then finished a distant fourth at Laguna Seca before his difficult Brno race.

Meanwhile his title rival Stoner has dominated the past two Grand Prix weekends and has now won seven out of 12 races in 2007.