Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi will line up in 13th place on the grid for the seventh round of the MotoGP season held at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
In Q1, Rossi waited for the first group of riders to get out on track before he left pit lane and took fifth place on his second flying lap.
He quickly returned to the pits with less than six minutes on the clock for a tyre swap.
The Italian was eager to improve on his second stint, though he had only four minutes left to put in two more laps.
He was pushed back to seventh as the pace quickened, but soon moved up to fourth on his next attempt.
He had time for one more go and was looking threatening, only to miss out on an entry into Q2 when he bettered his placement in the rankings to third with a 1'44.661s.
He will start tomorrow's race from the fifth row on the grid
“We had some good ideas for today, so I expected to be more competitive, but it‘s a little bit like the situation in Jerez, with a lack of grip we suffer a lot with the tyres and the qualifying was bad,” he explained.
“I was also unlucky I lost the entry into Q2 by just one position, so for sure it‘s difficult because the pace is not fantastic. It will be a hard race for everybody because the tyres seem to struggle to produce grip, especially in the hot conditions it will be hard, but we will try something else tomorrow morning and we‘ll see.”
