Rossi says Jerez win impossible

The six-time world champion, who lies second in the points, qualified fourth on his Yamaha, but was 0.709 seconds slower than his polesitting team-mate Jorge Lorenzo.

Afterwards, he said that the most he could expect from the race was a podium finish.

"No, it's not possible [to win]," said the 30-year-old Italian. "It's a big difference compared to practice yesterday. I could ride much better then.

"For sure we expected to have a better weekend here than we have done, especially after yesterday, but we had some problems that we didn't expect. Now we just have to make the maximum and try to arrive on the podium in the race."

Rossi, who had set the pace on Friday, said that his main problem was with the spec Bridgestone front tyres introduced this year, which are too soft for his liking.

"It's a big worry for sure," he added. "Last year me and Casey [Stoner] were able to use a different front tyre. Now that tyre is cancelled and we need to adapt our styles and our settings to this tyre, which is much softer.

"For sure my gap to the front guys was bigger with the qualifying tyres than the race tyres, but we have a problem.

"We already have some ideas of what we need to change for tomorrow, some changes in the settings, but it's not sure yet. We need more time to look at the data and decide what to change for the warm-up."