Marlboro Ducati's Valentino Rossi has added a gearbox that kept dropping into neutral to his list of things that are hindering him from challenging at the front of a MotoGP race this season.

At Indianapolis last night, Rossi passed a few riders from his 14th qualifying slot and then ran straight on to the track's oval, re-joining in dead last. He fought back again to tenth but is still clearly not happy with the GP11.1.

'Unfortunately the race was very bad. The bike was so difficult to ride -front and rear I don't have any grip. I push the front in acceleration and the rear spin around then I start to have problems with the gearbox and when I shift down I remain in neutral so I make two or three mistakes for this reason," said Rossi, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

"We don't know what to do for next week. We can hope to make a better result. The crash yesterday in qualifying, which robbed some confidence and was part of the reason we had to start so far back on the grid, and today there was a problem with the gearbox. The bike stuck in neutral six or seven times, and the first two caused me to go straight and lose time. We have this problem in the past but we think we fix and in this weekend, never happen just a problem in a race.

"I found myself in last place, but I decided to do what I could to at least get some points. In this morning’s warm-up, we had made a small change that let us improve the pace a little, but the race was really difficult. We know that we have to work hard. Ducati is doing that, and my team and I are as well, because we must try to not let up and to get the bike ready while we wait for technical updates.”