Valentino Rossi admitted he had hoped Mugello would bring an upturn

With Rossi a seven-time winner at the circuit in MotoGP and Ducati having tested its 2012 bike - an 800cc version of which Rossi is now using - at the track, there had been optimism that this weekend would see an upturn in Ducati's fortunes.

Rossi felt that had qualifying not been spoiled by rain, he would have been able to improve his position - but not by enough to be content.

"I think that with normal qualifying we can be a bit further up, like this morning around seventh or eighth place. But anyway, that's not enough," he said.

"I always have the same problems - I don't feel the front tyre very much, so I'm slow to enter the corner and that's the place where I lose a lot of time.

"We hoped at Mugello we could stay closer to the top, but at the end the gap is the same as at the other tracks. So it will be hard."

He hopes that a straightforward warm-up tomorrow might give Ducati chance to make improvements before the race.

"We have some other settings and some other options, so we hope we have the chance to try them in the dry or fully wet to understand our potential," said Rossi.

Asked if he felt it was possible to turn things around by fine-tuning the GP11.1 or whether new developments were required, Rossi replied: "I think it's possible to improve the set-up of this bike."

Rossi's team-mate Nicky Hayden, who is still using a version of the 2011 chassis, qualified ninth.