A difficult Malaysian Grand Prix weekend so far continued for Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team-mates Colin Edwards and James Toseland in Saturday's qualifying session.
Edwards - who had complained about poor engine performance on Friday - will start from ninth on the grid, and admitted he may be as much to blame as the bike.
“With the feeling I had with the bike, that was about as fast as I could go today. Being honest though I struggled a little bit today and I'm obviously doing something consistently wrong,” he said.
“I'm losing the same amount of time in the same sections over and over again, but when we change the bike we improve in one area and sacrifice feel in another. I can't get the bike turned in at all and I've always thought I've been good at that.
“At least I'm in front of Dovizioso on the grid, so hopefully I can take some more points out of him tomorrow and have a really good crack at fifth in the championship in Valencia,” added the Texan, who will start the race seven points behind the Repsol Honda rider.
Toseland will line-up for his penultimate race in MotoGP from the back row of the grid in 16th place, ahead of only rookie Gabor Talmacsi, after chronic rear grip troubles around a circuit he has never excelled at.
“This has always been a tough track for me and I wasn't expecting an easy weekend, but I wasn't expecting it to be as tough as this,” confessed the Englishman, who suffered a huge accident at Sepang in pre-season testing. “I'm struggling to get grip on the edge of the rear tyre to give me the confidence to push harder.
“We've tried a lot of different options to try and improve the setting but it doesn't seem to matter what we change, I don't have enough grip on the rear. It is a problem mid-corner and also when I first open the throttle.
“Tomorrow is going to be tough with the heat, but we might just have to gamble with a setting for the race and see what happens. Being so far back on the grid means it will be difficult, but I never give up and I'll be giving it my all,” he insisted.
