Valentino Rossi says Yamaha needs to work faster to find a fix to the electronics issues that once again plagued the Italian during the MotoGP Spanish Grand Prix weekend.
Both Rossi and team-mate Maverick Vinales battled through the winter with recurring traction issues brought about by the Yamaha's electronics, something which heavily affected them during the 2017 season.
Improvements made to the bike over the first three rounds, and a fresh track surface at Jerez, had Rossi confident of a strong weekend in Spain.
After qualifying down in 10th, Rossi salvaged fifth place when Andrea Dovizioso, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa crashed out, while polesitter Cal Crutchlow and Suzuki's Alex Rins also hit the floor while running in front of Rossi.
Rossi admits that he felt better on the bike than he did 12 months ago, where he finished a lowly 10th, but says his current woes mean this is his “potential” and has urged Yamaha to “speed up” its development.
“In the end, fifth place with our speed of the weekend is not so bad,” he said.
“I was also lucky because three guys in front crashed. But, the problem is that we are happy we do the maximum because the race was quite good, but unfortunately this is our potential now.
“I was a lot faster compared with last year, but it is not enough to fight for the podium.
“So, our technical situation now is difficult. If we want to try to fight for the podium and the victory, Yamaha has to try to help us, and I hope we can do [it] in a not too long time.”
Vinales finished in seventh having languished outside of the top 10 for much of the race, but feels Yamaha is “not far off” finding a fix.
“We were a little lucky because some riders made a mistake and we could jump up the leaderboard,” the Spaniard admitted.
“I was unable to go fast from the first lap and I was struggling a lot to stay with [Franco] Morbidelli and [Alvaro] Bautista.
“At the end I had a little bit more grip and I pushed, so I was a little bit stronger than Alvaro, but we can't be happy with seventh place.
“At the moment I'm mostly focused on the setting of the bike – we're not so far off a solution. The bike is working well, but we still need to work.
“We tried to solve it by changing the set-up, but I don't think that what we tried is the way forward.”
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