Movistar Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi says that tomorrow’s third MotoGP free practice at Silverstone is crucial to his weekend as he is currently not among the top-ten riders that automatically go through to the final qualifying session.

Rossi has suffered from front chatter on corner entry and hasn’t the grip to carry anything like the speed he needs and a total change in setup direction this afternoon ended up being the wrong way, so he is mired down in 13th place and some 1.8s slower than Marc Marquez.

However, Yamaha stable-mates Jorge Lorenzo and Pol Espargaro are suffering the same problem with only Bradley Smith using the soft tyre to good advantage to post a top-five time.

“It was a very difficult day, we expect to be faster and more competitive, but we struggle a lot. This morning was not fantastic but not so bad, I was not so far from the other guys but I don’t like the feeling with the bike, especially in the front so for this afternoon we modify the setting and weight distribution and try to improve the corner entry but unfortunately we did a lot worse and it looks like we take the wrong direction,” said Rossi, speaking at the track.

“I never have a good feeling with the bike especially because when I enter the corner I have vibrations in the front and there isn’t enough grip. I lose a lot of corner speed at the entry and I was quite slow. We try to continue to work in the practice to modify the bike in other ways but it was not enough. I think tomorrow we will do something completely different and try to understand how to go faster.

“At the end, Bradley Smith did a good laptime with the soft tyre but Jorge and Pol have the same problems as me. We are struggling and suffer the same problems.

“Tomorrow morning will be important for us. We hope for dry weather to improve because we are not in the top ten so the first target is to arrive in the top ten for qualifying two. If tomorrow we are slow then it is a problem. It is difficult to understand what we can do. We can change the weight distribution with weight on the front, or less, so it is crucial.

“In the centre, you have the Ducatis and Scott Redding who are fast because they have the soft tyre which is good for these temperatures and also because they are fast but the soft is a good advantage and it looks like with this temperature they can use this tyre for the race.”