Lorenzo seeks 'perfection' to beat Rossi

Yesterday Rossi had insisted that Misano was one of his weaker tracks and that he expected to trail Lorenzo and Honda's Dani Pedrosa - but he belied that pessimism by beating Lorenzo to the top spot in today's session, which Lorenzo had dominated until his Yamaha team-mate's late charge.

"I felt comfortable on my bike from the start and I was able to be quite fast, which is always encouraging, but I think we have some more work to do because we're not perfect yet and the front could be better, especially on the entry to the corners," said Lorenzo.

"Tomorrow we will try to work on this and especially on T2 and T3, because these are the areas where we are losing some time.

"Valentino is very strong, as I expected because it's his home and he won last year, so we will have to be at the maximum to be able to fight with him."

Rossi said he had been encouraged by his practice performance, having achieved a set-up breakthrough near the end of the hour.

"The first session was much better than in Indy and I am quite happy," he said. "We have made a few experiments with different settings and then at the end when we put everything together with the right tyre, I was able to do three fast laps and finish first.

"It's a good sign to be in this shape already on Friday and now we just have to improve a bit more tomorrow because it's very important here to be on the front row. It's quite a tricky track and you have to be quite careful in some places, but my bike felt good today."