Rossi disappointed with fourth

The Italian, who last won the championship in 2005, will clinch this year's crown in tomorrow's Japanese Grand Prix unless Casey Stoner out-scores him by 13 points.

But while Stoner qualified second at Motegi, Rossi had to settle for fourth, having lost time in traffic after Alex de Angelis crashed his Gresini Honda at the end of qualifying.

"Honestly I'm a bit disappointed because the front row was our target today, but anyway fourth isn't too bad," Rossi said.

"Unfortunately we spent a bit too much time with the race tyres and started our qualifying sequence a few minutes late, this meant that I was maybe one or two minutes late going out with my last tyre and I got a bit caught up with traffic when de Angelis fell."

He remains optimistic about his chances in the race.

"Our race pace is quite good so I am confident that we can be in the fight, although we will have to get a good start," Rossi said.

"We have one or two small problems that we need to work on so we will use the warm-up to check a few things and I think we can improve a little bit more."

The Yamaha rider said he did not plan to consider the points permutations until after the race.

"I am not thinking about the championship right now, I will just aim for the podium and see what happens," said Rossi.