"Not fantastic" Rossi admits race charge unlikely

On a weekend where the two works Yamahas have looked considerably off their usual pace in low-grip conditions in Barcelona, Rossi was absent from Q2 for the first time this year.

He couldn't secure an automatic spot in FP3 and then failed to progress through the first qualifying segment, coming up 0.040s short of advancing, which left him 13th on the grid.

“Sincerely, I expected to struggle less because yesterday I wasn't fantastic but I had a quite good feeling with the bike,” Rossi said.

“This morning, looks like the asphalt today provide less grip and for us was a big problem, we struggled a lot this morning.

“We have a lot of problems with the tyres especially, looks like we are not able to make the tyre work in the right way. With all the tyres it's difficult, some tyres make more laps but have less grip, we don't have the right choice front and rear.

“Starting from 13th will be very, very hard tomorrow, very tough also because the pace is not fantastic.”

The Italian last qualified outside of the top 10 at Phillip Island in 2016 and managed to fight through to second in that race – but he warned a repeat of such a performance was almost certainly not on the cards.

While Rossi was a competitive fifth in the race-simulation FP4 session, he took little solace from the result.

“The problem is that with the medium tyre we are not so bad for six laps, but the race is 25 [laps],” he said. “With the hard tyre, we are never good.

“So the choice is, make five laps and slow down, or make all the race slow.”

Rossi's points-leading teammate Maverick Vinales looked to be struggling more than the Italian on Friday but narrowly progressed through Q1 and qualified ninth.

The Spaniard had implied problems at Austin and Jerez were more to do with tyres, but said on Saturday that he does not “want to talk more about tyres because it looks like I am the only one talking all the time”.

Asked why he was struggling so much, he said: “It is the question I ask myself every time I cross the finish line. I don't know!

“We tried our best today and modified the bike in the sessions: all the way to the front, all the way to the rear, long bike, short bike but the problem is that the bike is not accelerating and keeps spinning, especially in corners 3 and 4 and the last one.

“I have a lot of problems there. It is the race where I use less power and one where I slide a lot.

“Very strange. I don’t have a good feeling on the bike. With the front I feel quite OK and I can push hard but the rear is terrible.”

The Yamaha works team, which also struggled badly at another low-grip Spanish venue in Jerez, was the biggest outfit to not partake in the post-Le Mans private test in Barcelona.

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont