Failure to keep pace with Stoner

Valentino Rossi blamed tyre problems for his failure to keep pace with Casey Stoner during the British Grand Prix. The Italian Yamaha rider finished fourth, 21 seconds behind race-winner Stoner, who increased his points lead over the five-time world champion from 14 to 26 points.

But he looked on course for a podium finish until his wet Michelin tyres began to fall apart as a dry line emerged in the late stages of the race and left him powerless to defend from Chris Vermeulen's Suzuki.

"Unfortunately today the conditions were not good for us at all and we had a lot of problems," said Rossi.

"In the full dry we would have been at our strongest, in full wet we would have been also quite good, but with a drying track like this we struggled a lot.

"I had to go very carefully just to be able to finish and, because we were riding with a wet tyre on a dry track, my tyre was destroyed by the end."

Rossi went off the track at Coppice after passing John Hopkins for third in the middle portion of the race and said that he suffered from an extreme lack of grip afterwards.

"I made a mistake and ran off the track when I was going the best I went during the whole race and then as the track began to dry I had less and less grip," he added.

"It seems that this year, when the conditions aren't perfect, we suffer a lot."

Rossi's performance was made all the more bizarre by virtue of his team-mate Colin Edwards finishing second - ten seconds ahead of him despite professing to hate wet weather races.