Valentino Rossi counting on wet race at Silverstone

The Ducati rider was fastest in a wet first session at Silverstone, before plummeting to 11th and slowest of the prototypes when the conditions improved for the second session. He was slower than both his factory team-mate Nickey Hayden, who was fourth fastest, and Hector Barbera on the satellite Pramac Ducati, who was 10th.

While Rossi admits that rain is his best hope of a result, he is looking for some dry running on Saturday to try and better understand the problems with the Ducati.

"This morning was very good in the wet," he said. "We were happy after the [first] practice. I was very competitive, and I think we can be competitive for a wet race.

"But this afternoon we had a lot more problems in the dry. This track is very difficult, very fast and technical. You have to have good experience, because there is a lot of fast parts, where the corner is blind, and you have to brake with memory. Because it is high speed, you can lose a lot of time.

"We had some problems with the settings. For me it was difficult to keep the front tyre on the ground. We have to work, but we will try tomorrow to be more competitive in the dry conditions. I hope we have some dry sessions."

According to Rossi, the run between Copse and the Becketts section is where he is losing most of the time to Hayden.

"For me it's impossible with full throttle. To Nicky I am losing six-tenths in 500 metres, [which is] very much. It's difficult to understand the line.

"Our target tomorrow is to close the gap to Nicky and Barbera."