Rossi bemoans 'worst qualifying'

The world champion, who has won nine times this year, had consistently been within half a second of the pace in the wet free practice sessions, but found himself struggling with his Yamaha on corner entry throughout qualifying - the first dry running of the weekend.

In the end he could not get within 1.4 seconds of Casey Stoner's pole position time and was slower not just than his teammate Jorge Lorenzo, but also than both of the privateer Tech 3 machines.

"I'm quite disappointed with the way it's gone today," Rossi said. We are struggling a lot.

"In the wet I was honestly quite happy, because I was fairly quick. Instead we suffered a lot in this first session in the dry. We are not okay with the set-up, I'm quite slow both with race and qualifying tyres.

Rossi said that his front end was not gripping enough through the slower turns, but believes that the Yamaha squad will be able to remedy the situation in time for Sunday's race.

And he also reckons that, despite his Bridgestone-tyred machine being slower than all the Michelin-shod Yamahas, it will be he who is the strongest representative of the Japanese manufacturer in the race.

"(Colin) Edwards, (James) Toseland and Lorenzo were all quicker than me, but we have seen that while they are very fast on Michelin qualifiers, they were very slow on the race tyres, so I think we will be looking much better in the race on Bridgestones," he added.

"The main problem is that I can't turn, so to go through corners I always need to lean too much, and then I lose a lot of time in acceleration as well. I'm very slow," he added. It's Valencia. I don't like the track - it's too narrow. And We always struggle here.

"Tomorrow we'll have to start from the fourth row, and that's the first big problem, but most of all we'll have to try to improve our performance and the set-up between the morning and the afternoon. I am quite confident that we can make the situation better."