Rossi Concedes That Tires are Yamaha’s Biggest Issue

MotoGP Yamaha rider Valentino Rossi has admitted that the biggest problem the Japanese marque had at Jerez concerned their tires.

Despite the first round of post-race interviews at Jerez with Yamaha riders Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales amounting to nothing more than a general “we’ve lost performance, we think it’s the tires, but we can’t say” Rossi has shifted his tune to putting the blame on the tires – but at least not wholly.

The Italian veteran admitted that the team attempted a bit of a change-up to combat Jerez’s well-known greasy track surface, but ultimately their set-up caused more bad than good. Rossi shared his thoughts during the post-Grand Prix test at Jerez, saying that the team was working hard to alleviate the issues that had stunted their incredible growth during the early portions of the season:

“I think that we tried something different in the setting, but unfortunately it didn’t work in the race. Today we with more the normal setting. Unfortunately, the new stuff, also the new chassis doesn’t work better.

For me, in general, this weekend was difficult because our bike doesn’t have a good marriage with the tires. This is the biggest problem. Also, today, we understand something, but in the end, the feeling remain similar. We hope for Le Mans that the bike is more friendly with the tires.

In all this weekend, we were never very strong, but before the race we tried to do something different, because we spin very much. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work. If I go with the normal setting, I think that I can make a better race. But we try, and unfortunately, we found that it worked worse.

But in this test, we tried some different things and I think that we understand something important to try to fix the corner entry for the future. “– Valentino Rossi

Rossi and Vinales both saw their performances flounder in the race as they were overtaken by the likes of Ducati’s Jorge Lorenzo and MotoGP rookie Johann Zarco – a highly unlikely pair given the blue bike’s legendary stability and power. Unfortunately, there’s not much left to do for either of them other than move forward into the season with grace and poise.