Whilst confessing that flying Michelin-shod team-mate
Jorge Lorenzo was probably out of reach, Rossi believes his own Bridgestone-shod Fiat Yamaha was capable of starting three places higher than his eventual fifth position.
Nevertheless, with world champion
Casey Stoner starting two places behind the Italian, Rossi has a real chance to gain ground on the early championship leader – and certainly isn't ruling out victory.
"Our target today was the front row and I think we could have done a 1min 38 and maybe been second, but unfortunately I had an electronic problem on my last qualifying lap and I had to stop, which was unlucky," said the Italian.
"This is a pity and of course it would be better to be on the front, but anyway we're not far away, the second row is not so bad and I think we can be competitive tomorrow. Our race pace is okay, I think with some small adjustments we can improve a bit more but we're close.
"Congratulations to Lorenzo, I don't know if we can be quite as fast as him on race tyres and he will be hard to beat tomorrow, but let's see! We still haven't decided on our final race tyre, we have to wait and see how the temperature is tomorrow, but it's going to be a very exciting race and we're all looking forward to it!" concluded the five time
MotoGP world champion.
"It was a pity that Valentino couldn't finish his final qualifying lap today but unfortunately he had a small electronic issue, which we're now looking into to work out exactly what happened so that we can avoid it in future," said team manager Davide Brivio.
"The good news is that, apart from this lap, we were fast with the qualifying tyre as well as on race tyres and so this bodes well for the rest of the season's races," he continued.
"Congratulations to Jorge and his team because he was very fast, I don't know if we have quite the same pace as him but anyway I think that we can fight at the front."
