Nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi declared himself unhappy with his performance at the Phillip Island MotoGP test as he failed to find the feeling he needs on worn tyres in order to be fast at the end of a race.

The Doctor ended the test outside the top ten in terms of outright time, but wasn’t looking for one-lap pace. Instead, Rossi - usually a master of tyre management - needs to work harder on making the Michelins do what he wants.

"I struggled quite a lot on both tyres, especially the front. For sure these conditions, this temperature is completely different to the Grand Prix, and was a bit too soft. But sincerely it was not my main programme,” said Rossi, speaking at the track.

"We tried to work a lot on the pace for the second half of the race, because we suffered last year. We tried something quite different but in the end we didn’t improve a lot. We have to try something else. I think that the bike has good aspects, especially about the engine, but for sure this test was more difficult for me. So I’m not very happy, we need to try better in Qatar.

"We work a lot to try to improve the feeling of the bike on old tyres, we took a lot of data, we made a hard job, but in the end we didn’t fix our problems. So we have to try something else for Qatar."