Valentino Rossi fears Yamaha's Silverstone MotoGP dry pace is poor

Rossi claimed second on the grid behind Cal Crutchlow in a wet qualifying session, but is concerned about the pace of his Yamaha in the dry conditions forecast for Sunday's race.

He hopes that Yamaha can find improvements overnight and in the Sunday morning warm-up session, having been unable to work on dry-weather set-up in the wet fourth practice session just prior to qualifying.

"This front row is important for tomorrow because if it will be dry, we are not very strong," he said.

"We have this evening to work, we can modify something, and I hope it will be dry tomorrow morning and we can try something in the warm-up because the tyre choice is unclear for a lot of riders."

He explained that finding a tyre that would offer race-long performance was a major challenge for himself and team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, while he believes Maverick Vinales, Marc Marquez and Andrea Iannone have shown more consistent pace.

"We are not very good with the tyres. With the front, I have a good feeling with the soft, but it's difficult to make [it last] the race," said Rossi.

"The other tyre that I try makes the bike a lot more difficult to ride.

"Also with the rear it is the same. To make the corner, I need to stay a little bit too much on the edge and for this reason I think that the tyres suffer.

"I think that the beginning of FP3 was very important for understanding the pace, and I had quite good pace, I was in P4 or P5. After seven or eight laps the problems started. We need to do 20 laps.

"It looks like the top guys, the top three especially - Iannone, Vinales and Marquez - can stay more constant. So we need to try something to try some modifications to be strong also in the second half of the race."

Lorenzo qualified only ninth, saying he struggled for confidence in worsening conditions while others improved their times.

He agrees that the team has work to do to improve its dry pace for the race.

"It looks like tomorrow is going to be dry, so we have to use the warm-up to improve the bike a little bit to be more prepared for a dry race," he said.