Movistar Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi has ruled out using the hard tyre in tomorrow’s Austin MotoGP race and will instead opt for the 2013-spec medium which Bridgestone saw fit to bring to the Grand Prix weekend.

Rossi ran the harder option in free practice three this morning, along with a revised setup, but it didn’t work for him, so he and crew chief Silvano Galbusera changed back for the fourth practice, and added some tweaks, which brought Rossi a second-row start.

“The important is tomorrow. I am satisfied about today, especially about the qualifying as this morning we tried to modify something with the bike but unfortunately it didn’t work very well and it was my worst practice,” said Rossi, speaking at Austin.

“But with my team from the free three to the free four we change the bike and in the free four I was fifth with a good pace also, and especially we make a small step for the qualify. About the qualify I am satisfied as we are less than half a second from the pole and in the second row we are very close.

“We have a good pace for tomorrow. Will be hard, especially with Marquez is fast but I think we are competitive. There is no way to use the hard tyre with the Yamaha, so we will use the other I think.”