Rossi happy with practice progress

The Yamaha rider ended the day fourth fastest, and although he found the conditions frustrating, he was pleased with the work he had managed to achieve between showers.

"The weather today was unbelievable and the track went from wet to dry four or five times, which made it very difficult to understand," Rossi said. "The conditions definitely weren't the best, especially because it was very, very cold.

"Despite this it was not a bad day; we worked well, tried several different settings and found some good tyre possibilities to keep going with tomorrow. In fact we tried quite a lot of tyres, wet and dry, and our level for the first day in this respect is not so bad, although we will be in better shape if we have a little bit more temperature.

"At the end we are fourth but it's okay, especially considering that we have a few problems still to deal with, including not enough weight on the front which means I'm not yet fast enough in the long corners. We have some ideas about how to improve on things for tomorrow."

But his teammate Colin Edwards was less positive after struggling to 15th position.

"The bike was most definitely riding me for most of today and not the other way around," Edwards said.

"To be honest I was just holding on for most of the time and trying to survive and, try as we might, we couldn't seem to get to a decent base setting.

"The bike felt pretty nervous and twitchy and we're definitely going to have to change a few things to get it working. Obviously Valentino's doing a lot better with the same bike so we need to look at what he's doing to see if it can help us.

"We didn't even really get to a stage today where we could gauge how good the tyres were so we've really got some work to do tonight.

"I'm disappointed because I'm always so excited to come here; it's one of my favourite tracks and I haven't ridden one good lap today.

"Anyway, we'll have a big meeting tonight, look at the data and I have every faith that my guys will be able to turn things around as usual."