"We had a couple of ideas to try but in the end we decided to stick to what we know because we need some more time to understand how to improve and how to be faster. We know we can do better than this and so we just need to gather all the information and use it in the best way for the next race.

"Finally I want to say congratulations to Lorenzo for a great debut tonight; honestly I'm not surprised because I knew he was fast and talented, but he did very well tonight in a hard race so well done to him," concluded Vale.

Stoner and Rossi were the only Bridgestone riders to finish in the top seven.

"Casey was the only Bridgestone rider to get competitiveness from the race tyres over the full race distance, and he set some very impressive times, but the results from other riders on our tyres shows that we have more work to do on our low temperature compounds," admitted Hiroshi Yasukawa, director of Bridgestone Motorsport.

Rossi must now hope that the return to a warmer day time schedule, for the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez on March 30, will heat up his title challenge.