At Yamaha, it's not quite the start we expected at Jerez. Certainly, spearhead Maverick Vinales expressed his confirmed satisfaction on the track while Franco Morbidelli led in the Petronas satellite clan. But Valentino Rossi regretted that with a new M1 he found the old problems while, for the first time, Fabio Quartararo did not show overwhelming enthusiasm towards his M1. It was well worth a little explanation from Massimo Meregalli…
In the Monster Energy Yamaha team, the situation is different on both sides of the box. On the one hand Maverick Vinales who manages to stay in the top 10 by being very close to Marc Marquez. The other Valentino Rossi who struggles in all conditions.
Tomorrow, in FP3, it will be important to make the necessary improvements to have all the M1s in Q2 qualifying, avoiding Q1. The Doctor is certainly the most at risk, given the rear grip issues he had in today's free practice.
Massimo Meregalli spoke to Sky Sport MotoGP after what happened today with Red in Jerez: “ when we stress the edge of the tire a lot, we put it in crisis with such high temperatures and we also have difficulty braking. We are trying to understand why we are having more problems than Wednesday. We also had problems with Maverick at the start of FP2, then we analyzed everything and the cls found a solution in this part of the box ».
The team manager of Yamaha admits that the way the nine-time world champion drives particularly affects him: “ Vale's style does not solve the problem we often suffer from. He suffers more than anyone. However, he tries to change his style to suffer less. Sometimes it is easier to do this and sometimes less. He knows how to drive in certain situations to put less stress on the tire, but it is not always easy to implement it ". It will be recalled that Vale has not yet signed anything for 2021, even if the speeches put it at Petronas…
A response for Fabio Quartararo
Exactly, Petronas… fabio quartararo said the 1 Yamaha M2020 was less intuitive than the 2019 one. Meregalli answers : " this motorcycle has several positive points and a negative point, probably the one highlighted by him. It adapts a little less in turns than the others. However, with the new one we have gained grip, tire wear, although this is not the case for Vale, and acceleration. There are more strengths than flaws. Engineers are confident they can fix the weak spote ».
The manager Yamaha is asked about the possibility that Valentino is using a configuration that he doesn't like, but which could allow him to solve the problem of excessive tire wear: " the settings are generally similar to each other. The way you ride changes as you enter and exit curves ". The passion of Valentino Rossi must be decidedly inexhaustible...
MotoGP Jerez 1 J1: times
