Rossi admits crash was his mistake

The championship leader fell while in second place behind Jorge Lorenzo when his bike appeared to jump under braking for Turn 2. But he says, having analysed the data, that it was due to a mistake on his part.

"I was a bit wide at Turn 1 and in order to get back on the racing line I moved too far left and ended up braking on a dirty part of the track," Rossi told Italia1 television.

"As soon as I leaned the bike to the right, it dropped. Honestly, right there and then I couldn't understand why I had crashed, but then we looked at the data. In any case it was an error with my racing line.

"It's true, the rear lost contact a bit, but I don't think that was the problem. It was most of all the fact that I was 1.5 metres off, because I was getting back to the racing line after the mistake, so I braked on a dirty patch."

Rossi admitted that he would have struggled to stay with Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo had he stayed on his bike.

"We suffered throughout the weekend as we never managed to find the optimal set-up, so when Lorenzo overtook me I immediately thought that it would be too difficult to keep up with him because he was two or three tenths quicker," he added.

"It would have been fine to end up second with my 50-point advantage, but that was probably too easy!"