Rossi optimistic he can match Stoner

Ducati rider Stoner has won at the Qatar track for the past three years, and beat Rossi to pole there today by 0.3 seconds.

But Rossi thinks his Yamaha will be better in race trim, and that this will allow him to at least challenge Stoner for the lead.

"At the end in this practice, with the harder tyres and the race settings, I was very fast," Rossi said.

"For sure tomorrow it will be difficult to stay with Casey, but we are not so far away, so second position is a good position to start with.

"Unfortunately with the soft tyre I wasn't able to improve enough to do pole position, because the rear slid a bit too much. So we suffered a little bit more than we expected.

"But anyway, it's okay, second position is good. Tomorrow we'll try to improve our setting a bit and we'll try to go with him."