Marlboro Ducati's Valentino Rossi has said he will be happy to  keep the gap to Casey Stoner at a second or less on the final day of testing at Sepang tomorrow after another successful day lapping the Malaysian circuit.

The Doctor, who finished 0.9s off the world champion, achieved his goal of lapping at 2'01s and has identified where improvements need to be made with the GP12, some of which can't be made with track setup alone.

“It was another positive day, both because we achieved our goal of lapping at 2:01 and because we managed to make further progress with the bike’s setup. On the other hand, as is normal with a brand-new bike like the GP12, as we progress with our tests we also find other details that can’t be addressed with setup alone and that will therefore have to be perfected in the coming weeks," said the Italian.

"We had already identified those areas yesterday, acceleration and electronics, and we confirmed the progress made with the front end. Honda and Yamaha have been working on their bikes for a year, while we’ve just had two days, which makes our job particularly challenging, but we already knew that as well. Tomorrow will be important as well because we’ll be able to make an overall assessment of the three days, and we’ll have a clearer idea of where we stand compared to the others. If we manage to stay under one second from the top, I’ll be happy.”