Ducati's Valentino Rossi failed to live up to the promise of his final free practice laptimes in today's MotoGP qualifying session at Indianapolis, finishing down in 11th place, nearly two seconds off the pace and behind Randy De Puniet on the CRT Aprilia.

The Doctor managed to haul himself up to eighth in the earlier session when the track temperature was not so high, but as it rose, Rossi was unable to find any grip from either the soft or hard-compund Bridgestones and found himself four-tenths slower this afternoon.

"It's a great pity for us, after this morning we were optimistic. We did a modify to the bike to improve my feeling and it was not so bad, I did some good laptimes with the hard and with soft tyre, and so we expect a better qualify but with the higher temperature, we suffer a lot with the rear grip and I was also slower compared with this morning," said Rossi, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

"This year is very difficult, very tough. We have to understand the problem to modify for tomorrow and especially understand if we can stay with a good rhythm. This morning I wasn't very far from the guys in the second group but this afternoon they are able to improve and us not."