Valentino Rossi will hope familiarity holds the key to success as his thrilling back-and-forth tussle for the MotoGP world title with Jorge Lorenzo continues at the San Marino Grand Prix this weekend.

The momentum swung back in Rossi's favour when he triumphed at a wet Silverstone last time out to take a 12-point lead over Movistar Yamaha team-mate Lorenzo with six races remaining.

That was Rossi's fourth victory of the season and saw him re-take the lead after Lorenzo's dominant performance in Brno.

And Misano is a track that Rossi knows perhaps better than any other rider considering he was born just 10 kilometres from the circuit.

Misano has proved a happy hunting ground for Rossi in the past, the Italian winning three premier class races at the track - including 12 months ago when defending champion Marc Marquez crashed out chasing his rival.

However, Lorenzo has also enjoyed plenty of success at Misano and the battle for supremacy could yet swing back in the Spaniard's favour come Sunday.

Lorenzo won three straight races at the track between 2011 and 2013, while he has never finished lower than second at a race at Misano.

Indeed, only two other riders have won at Misano in MotoGP since the circuit was reinstated full time to the calendar in 2007, Casey Stoner in that year and Dani Pedrosa in 2010.

Marquez is in desperate need of a victory to keep his diminishing hopes of retaining his title alive.

The Repsol Honda rider crashed out at Silverstone when in pursuit of Rossi and is now 77 points adrift of the leader with time running out.

Misano is just one of three circuits where Marquez has failed to win a premier class race, but the Spaniard is refusing to give up the ghost just yet.

"Obviously I'm disappointed to have crashed out of the race in the UK, but I was pushing and this can happen when the weather is like that," he said. 

"Of course the championship is getting further away from us but we were back fighting at the front and this is definitely a positive.

"Now we head to Misano which is a pretty small and slow track. We were testing there before the summer break so I hope the data from that test can help us with the setting this weekend."