Valentino Rossi kicked off his final race weekend as part of the Factory Yamaha outfit with a disastrous start having dedicating Friday’s two extended practice sessions to working on balancing his M1.

A difficult day got worse in the afternoon after a crash prevented him from fine-tuning his number one machine, ending the opening day at Portimão in 21st place.

Rossi spent the 70-minute sessions getting fully to grips with the technical 4.6km Portimão track while focusing on the set-up and balance of his bike. Analysing his progress so far by attempting to push at the halfway stage of the afternoon session, ‘The Doctor’ went down at turn four after slowing for traffic but was fine to continue, arriving back at the box with just over 15 minutes to go and switching to his second bike.

The progress, however, was far from ideal, with the spare machine failing to match his preferred feeling. The Italian eventually set his best time - a 1’41.279, 0.667s quicker than his morning’s fastest - after 28 laps but it wasn’t enough to improve his position in the standings and the 41-year-old concluded day one in 21st, 1.862s from the front.

Despite the day’s difficulties, Rossi was positive about the Portimão layout: “The track is fantastic. It’s different from the other tracks. With MotoGP bikes it’s difficult because you are going so fast but it’s beautiful and a lot of fun to ride.

“We tried some different things today, but in the end we didn’t find a real step. With my first bike, which had a closer to normal setting, I was a bit faster but, unfortunately, I lost the front in Turn 4. I crashed, but I’m okay.

“After that I had to go out with the other bike, and I didn’t have the same feeling, so I wasn’t fast enough. We had tried to improve rear grip, but I lost speed on corner entry. What we gained we lost in another part.

“Tomorrow we will stick to a more standard setting and will try to understand if we can be stronger.”