Rossi finished Friday morning's first practice in sixth, with Edwards ninth, but the pair failed to make any significant progress in the afternoon. Rossi eventually finished the day down in eighth, 0.652secs behind
MotoGP world champion
Casey Stoner, with Edwards just 13th.
"Today was quite difficult and we really hoped to start in a better way here," admitted Rossi, rumoured to be switching from Michelin to
Bridgestone tyres for 2008. "We're pushing at the maximum but at the moment it's quite hard to ride the bike how I want to. The main problem is that we don't have grip and, although some tyres and settings are better than others, we're still sliding a lot.
"We've tried some very different set-ups today but so far we haven't made much progress so we're going to have to keep going," he continued. "Our bike isn't the fastest and I think we can improve the setting more, but the main problem is to find a way to use the tyres so that we're in a position to fight. Everyone wants to try to finish the season on a high note so we will look closely at the information we have tonight and try to improve things for tomorrow."
Edwards, competing in his last grand prix for the factory team, may have 'only' been one second behind Stoner - but the Texan was on the limit.
"I think it would be pretty hard to put into words how hard I'm trying out there - I think I'd need to write it in red ink for starters!" he said. "We're on the limit but we really can't seem to do anything with it at the moment. I felt like I was going out there with the constant risk of a crash today and I kept pushing because it was the only option to try to find the key, but so far no luck. We've got one tyre that's good on the right and one that's good on the left but we can't find a combination that works. We didn't start well this morning and then we made no progress this afternoon so we're going to have to come up with something radical to fix it for tomorrow."
