Pedrosa still chasing race set-up

After all the previous sessions had been wet, Pedrosa used the first half of qualifying to work on race set-up before storming up to second on the grid on one of only a handful of laps on qualifying rubber.

But the Spaniard, who won at Valencia last year, still believes that his RCV is a long way off the set-up required to challenge for victory.

"We had to try and forget about qualifying for most of the session, but because of the conditions, it was not a good time to try the race tyres," Pedrosa told BBC Sport.

"I hope the weather can be nice tomorrow so that we can try some more tyres in warm-up and that will help us get closer to a good race set-up."

Having already won at Jerez and Barcelona earlier this year, Pedrosa will complete a remarkable treble of winning three times in his home country in the same year if he manages to take victory on Sunday.