Rossi not comfortable yet at Le Mans

The Fiat Yamaha rider ended the opening day of practice for the French Grand Prix in seventh place, slower than teammate Colin Edwards, and admitted that his preparations had not gone too well.

"This morning things were going okay but this afternoon we ran into a few problems and we weren't able to improve our situation much," said Rossi. "The tyre rule isn't great for us here and we haven't yet found the right tyre from our selection.

"However, we've gathered a lot of data today so hopefully we can make some changes tomorrow to get our package working better. I think that we didn't find exactly the right direction today with regards to the setting; this is quite a strange track and at the moment I can't ride the bike how I want to.

"I have a big score to settle here after what happened last year so we've got to keep focused and work at 100% in order to be in the best shape for a battle on Sunday. We need to close the gap to the others tomorrow.

"Colin is a bit faster than me and he showed the bike is working quite well, so hopefully we can study the data we have and come up with a new direction for tomorrow."

Edwards had a much better day - despite a mid-session drama in the afternoon when a bee got caught in his boot.

"I'd literally just passed the entrance to pit lane when I realised, so I had to get round a whole lap with it in there," he said. "It stung me a couple of times in my foot but I think I'll survive."

Looking back on the progress he made with the bike, the American said: "We made some small adjustments to the bike setting and generally stiffened it up a bit in order to make it a little bit more responsive at this track and it seems to have worked.

"The bike's definitely feeling pretty good at the end of day one. The tyre rules are once again making things a little difficult; we've found a good tyre which we added onto our selection at the last minute last night and I think I did my best lap on that this afternoon after quite a lot of laps.

"We'll check it again tomorrow but if the conditions don't change then it looks like being the number one choice for my race tyre. I had a bit of a problem this afternoon when a bee somehow flew into my boot! Anyway, the bike feels good, we've made a strong start and hopefully we can carry on like this tomorrow."