Dovizioso not ruling out victory

The Italian starts fourth on the grid, on the inside of the second row, having qualified more than 0.6s slower than poleman Jorge Lorenzo.

But Dovizioso says there is more time to come from himself and that he expects to learn more about the 3.666-mile track during the first MotoGP motorcycle race of the modern era to be held at the Northamptonshire venue: "Sure we have the possibility to do another podium but our target now is not just that - it is the top step.

"Lorenzo and [Dani] Pedrosa were much faster today, but it is not impossible to race with them tomorrow, and especially Dani crashed so things could change. I am comfortable.

"I am not so happy about [my race pace]," he added. "I think one second is little bit too much to start the race, but I also think it is not really one second.

"When you race at a new track you can learn a lot and it is easy to be faster [during the race]. It is not like another track where you know everything and in the practice you do your best and then in the race you can be only so fast."

The 24-year-old, who won last year's British GP at Donington added that tyre choice could be critical, given the combination of bumps and fluctuating track temperature at Silverstone this weekend.

"Everybody has the same problems," he said. "The characteristic of the tyre doesn't change much from every bike - it changes a little bit because of the distribution of the weight but the characteristic is that the tyre is similar.

"It depends more on the temperature. If it is hot then we can think about using a hard tyre, but if it is like this then it will be a strange situation because the fastest riders can go hard but it is not safe - the hard tyres are difficult to maintain temperature in and if you cannot get heat into them then they work worse than the soft."