We keep Andrea Dovizioso's curve as a reference and now add those of the three Yamahas.
We see very clearly that John Zarco tries to warm up his tires well and, on the second pass, he is the slowest of all the drivers concerned. His pace accelerates lap after lap and, as he had announced, is at his maximum potential between the fifth and seventh laps, allowing himself the luxury of achieving the best lap in the race.
Then, little by little, the pace decreases but we do not notice any big difference in times, the disruption of the 13th lap being linked to the exceeding of Valentino Rossi and the attack of Dani Pedrosa on the Tech3 driver.
Conversely, we see that Maverick Vinales lost a good second on a mistake on the fourth lap, which probably cost him fourth place.
Finally, the curve of Valentino Rossi experienced a disturbance on the 13th and 14th laps, times when the Italian driver was overtaken by Dani Pedrosa then Maverick Viñales. That of the 22nd round is only linked to a mini drop of water.
We also see that the choice of tires (soft/soft for Zarco, medium/hard for Viñales and Rossi) had no influence on the different race paces, this being generally similar.
Finally, a certain logic in the classification is respected since, in these conditions, Johann Zarco did not make a “big” mistake, compared to one for Maverick Vinales and two for Valentino Rossi.
Let us understand: by “big mistake”, we are talking about half-seconds…
On the other hand, and this is undoubtedly what worries Yamaha, we also note that, on this circuit, no Iwata machine was able to maintain its rhythm during the second part of the race, unlike the Ducati of Dovizioso and of Marquez's Honda... The degradation linked to the tires is progressive, but it is there, which is not the case for the two leading men.
