Clearly, in MotoGP, the tide is turning quickly. Last Sunday, late in the afternoon, on the podium of a Spanish Grand Prix inaugurating the season, two Yamahas sat on the first two steps while Marc Marquez was evacuated on a stretcher. But now we learn just before the Andalusian Grand Prix, still in Jerez, that the Honda official will be there while the Yamaha engines have gone to Japan for inspection. To come back less powerful?
In what is also called the Jerez 2, we will be curious to see how it will behave Marc Marquez, declared fit by doctors, while his right humerus was operated on for a fracture this Tuesday. But we will also be attentive to the performance of Yamaha . These seemed to be well born in view of the performances and the results displayed last weekend. But perhaps we shouldn't trust appearances...
We learn from the site Motorsport that one of the engines of each of the riders of the official Yamaha team was sent to Japan for a thorough check. It will be recalled that Valentino Rossi had to stop his race following an alert message on his dashboard. On this mechanical expedition to Japan, Massimo Meregalli commented on Sky Sport:
« We still don't know what happened. However, we had two problems. For safety reasons, we decided to ship two engines to Japan. The pilots experienced two different things. For Vale, the red light on the dashboard came on and the engine became silent. As for Maverick, he heard strange noises. Nothing else is known, but we don't expect reliability issues anyway ».
Engine allocation is already well underway
But what we knew less was that Maverick Vinales was not spared from the worries. The proof: he will have to start using a fourth engine, out of the five in the allocation determined for this 13-race season. Red will be on its third.
A worrying assessment which reminds us of the concerns ofAprilia who had decided, for this first meeting, to lower the power of its new engine in order to work further on its reliability. A recipe that could be validated by Iwata engineers who always play safety before boldness.
If this were to prove true it would frankly not be good news for Yamaha riders who are already suffering at top speed compared to the competition. However, the next steps are Brno, and, above all, the Red Bull Ring, which will be surveyed twice in as many consecutive weekends.
The fact remains that the information only cites the pilots Red et Casa Particular in Viñales. The engine of the Yamaha Petronas fabio quartararo went silent. It will be recalled that the technical freeze has been decided until 2022…
