Rossi "lucky" to escape FP4 crash without injury

Rossi, who is still recovering from breaking his right leg in a training accident in early September, fell at the Turn 8 left-hander during FP4.

However, the Italian was quickly able to get back up on his feet and managed to return to the track on his bike.

Rossi said that while he could feel some pain, he was "lucky" to avoid a bigger injury.

"I was lucky because it was a highside but fortunately the bike rotated below and I stayed on the bike after I crash, but I'm good," Rossi said.

"I have some more pain now, but it's okay, I didn't hit the leg a lot. Finger [hurts] as always, but was good because it was quite a big crash."

Following his crash, Rossi had to spend a few minutes to successfully rejoin the track on his bike.

The Italian insisted on returning the bike, which had the "best setup", back to his pitbox in order to be able to use it for qualifying.

However, the damage sustained on the bike needed too much time to fix, confining Rossi to his second bike for the pole shootout.

"It was my race bike with my best setup and I think that, it is also important to have [it] for the qualifying," he explained.

"Unfortunately there was too much damage so I make a lot of effort for nothing.

"But if the bike remained there, maybe I don't come back in time for the qualifying so I wanted it to bring. But the mechanics say no way, too much time for [fixing], it's over."

Rossi took 12th in qualifying after a gamble to run on slicks on a drying track failed to pay dividends.

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont