The Petronas SRT rider experienced one of the toughest weekends of the year in practice and qualifying on his Yamaha and brought his M1 to eighth place on the grid.
But the cooler race day temperatures compared to the rest of the weekend forced Rossi to ride the middle rear tire instead of his preferred hard option.
Rossi had a strong start in the top eight and said he had seen a dramatic drop in grip over the course of the race, as if his tire were “burning” and he crashed on lap 18.
Rossi says he was hoping to have a stronger final at Silverstone and the fact that it didn’t was “a great shame”.
“I’ve been pretty strong all weekend, I feel good with the bike and I had decent pace,” said Rossi. “We know it’s a little harder for us to start with the medium because it was better with the hard.
“But today it was very cold so we had to go with the medium.
“So I expected that we could have more problems, but not like that. I finally got off to a good start and I was also in the first laps [lead] Group, that’s important.
“I was more or less where I expected it to be, where I could fight at my pace, for seventh, eighth, ninth place I think.
“But after five or six laps the rear tire fell off incredibly. I no longer had any grip on the right. It’s like the tire has been burned, and after the rubber has lost a lot of power.
Valentino Rossi, Petronas Yamaha SRT
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“I started losing a second, three seconds per lap. I tried to get to the end, but I was very, very slow.
“It’s a great shame, I’m very sad because I wanted to try to get a good result here, because I like the track and it has a good atmosphere with a lot of fans around the track.
“And especially because I felt good on the bike, because this track is very fast, has technical points and I was always competitive at the weekend. I wanted to try to get into the top 10, but that’s how it is.”
When asked if there was a chance to use the harder rear tire in the race, Rossi added: “Unfortunately no. Unfortunately it is not possible to use the hard rear tire because we do not have enough temperature to get the rubber to work.
“I know it’s a little more difficult for us with the medium because I was faster with the hard yesterday, but you can’t make up your mind.
“You had to race with the medium because it was very cold today.”