Motorcycle champion Valentino Rossi's world rally championship debut has ended prematurely after a crash on the first serious challenge of the Rally of Great Britain.

Rossi pushed too hard in his Peugeot on the 23.12km run through the Brechfa forest and crashed.

	:	GB Rally stage guide

It brought an end to a brief but impressive showing - the MotoGP champion looked good on Thursday's super special stage in Cardiff by setting the joint 25th-fastest time.

Valentino got a little bit off line and we backed into a sort of hole Carlo Cassina Valentino Rossi's co-driver

That was a creditable nine seconds off the pace of early leader Markko Martin.

The performance was all the more respectable because the 23-year-old Italian was forced to drive part of the night-time stage without lights after an electrical problem.

Co-driver Carlo Cassina - who partnered former champion Miki Biasion to victory on the 1988 Rally of Portugal - said: "We were going into a medium-fast, third-gear left hander.

"Valentino got a little bit off line and we backed into a sort of hole.

"It was a fairly steep slope that we went down and there was no way to get the car back on the road.

"We tried to push the car back on the road ourselves but it was immediately clear that wouldn't work.

"So Valentino went running back up the stage looking for help, but there was no-one to be found.

"Then he ran a couple of kilometres in the other direction and eventually came back with 10 spectators.

"That, unfortunately, still was not enough. When the stage was finished, a small van towed it clear in seconds and I was able to drive it back to service."