Marlboro Ducati's Valentino Rossi has hinted the angle and position of the engine in his Desmosedici GP11.1 may change in order to help him get the riding position and front-tyre load he needs to be able to find grip.

The Doctor qualified in a dismal 13th place during this morning's final timed session at Phillip Island and apologised for simply being too slow in fast corners - which the Australian circuit has a lot of. He is still complaining of no feel from the front and a modification to the engine position looks set to be the next step.

"It's is a lot of work to modify the position of the engine but it is something that I think also Filippo (Preziosi) is working on. My position on the bike is not good, I don't have the feeling on the front and I have a problem also to load the front under acceleration and unfortunately this problem also remain with the modifications so maybe we don't modify the right things. I don't know if the change needed is big or small, we need the right change," said Rossi, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

"I don't have the feeling with the front. We try to modify something but in the corner I am very slow, especially in the faster part of the track and I also had the same sort of problem in other part so my performance depends a lot of time on how many fast corner there are where I have a lot of problem with this bike and here in Phillip Island I have very much because it is very fast.

"It's not nervous, I don't have enough feeling for push and I am very sorry but the problem remains the same and also if we change something in the setting the situation doesn't change enough and I remain always very far. Like a lot of times this season, when we come from quite a good race, we expect to continue with that level of performance but we come back another time in big trouble."