2008 MotoGP World Championship leader Valentino Rossi works on solving Catalan Grand Prix problems during post-race test.

Having declared that catching Dani Pedrosa had been 'impossible' from ninth on the grid, Valentino Rossi unsurprising worked on solving his Catalan qualifying problems during his Monday test.

Rossi's worst grid position of the season was made all the more significant by a poor start and by the time he reached second position, on lap 9 of 25, race winner Pedrosa was long gone.

The Fiat Yamaha rider spent the remainder of the race fighting for the runner-up spot with world champion Casey Stoner, something a visibly delighted Rossi secured by half-a-second at the line.

Rossi had cited corner-entry problems as his biggest difficulty during Saturday's qualifying session, an issue that was improved for race day following a late night for the factory Yamaha engineers.

Further progress on Monday saw Rossi set a best lap time, with a qualifying tyre, of 1min 41.857secs. That time was 0.57secs faster than Rossi had managed during the grand prix qualifying hour, but would still only have placed him seventh on the grid.

Stoner's pole time was a 1min 41.186secs and the young Australian, who also uses Bridgestone tyres, was the only rider quicker than Rossi on Monday - setting a 1min 41.533secs with a qualifying tyre on an early version of next year's GP9.

Nevertheless, Rossi's team manager Davide Brivio was pleased with the work done during 61 laps of the Circuit de Catalunya.

"Once again we've had a very positive day's testing, and it's been good to have the time to work through some of the problems we had at the weekend in order to completely understand what happened," he said. "We mainly worked on setting and tyres and, together with Bridgestone, we got some good information that we are sure will help us over the next two races.

"With qualifying tyres we were able to improve our time from Saturday, so this is also a good outcome. Finally we also worked on our starts, in order to try to improve the beginning of the race for us. We are satisfied with the day's work and now we're looking forward to the next races," he added.

Rossi will not test on Tuesday and the next time he rides his M1 will be during Friday practice for the British Grand Prix, on June 19, when injured team-mate Jorge Lorenzo is expected to return.