Valentino Rossi insists his third-place finish in the MotoGP French Grand Prix was down to the Le Mans circuit suiting the bike, and says Yamaha “still has to work” to improve the M1.
Last year's French Grand Prix was set to be a Yamaha lock-out of the podium before Rossi crashed on the last lap, with Rossi, teammate Maverick Vinales and Tech3's Johann Zarco also starting from the front row.
Rossi came through from ninth to finish five seconds off the win in third, and felt the Yamaha had improved greatly from a troubled Saturday which left the Italian feeling “pessimistic”.
However, he admits the circuit “helped a lot”, and cites the fact that he was only able to finish third at a track Yamaha dominated at last year during a “perfect” weekend as proof the team is still lagging behind its rivals.
“I was quite pessimistic, because the work we did on Saturday at the end was not good,” Rossi, who is now 39 points from standings leader Marc Marquez in fourth, said.
“But yesterday we worked hard and we made some modifications to the bike, they worked well, we improved a lot the acceleration, improved the grip.
“In fact already this morning in the warm-up I was P5 and my pace was not so bad.
“So I thought that I can do a good race. But when you start from the third row everything has to go in a good way.
“I did a good start, I was fast in the first laps and I stayed with the top guys. The more positive [thing] is that my rhythm was good, I was able to go faster than in the practice, and especially I was able to go fast to the end.
“This is so important. But this track is usually fantastic for us, always, last year the Yamaha dominated; I crashed, but if not we would have arrived first, second and third.
“For sure it helps a lot our bike, so this time with the perfect weekend in the weather and a great work in the box, I arrive only third.
“I prefer to tell you that it's good also for the other race tracks, but unfortunately it's the race track that help us a lot.
“We don't have a particular problem, the problem is just that our opponents are a little bit faster, so we have to work.”
When asked if Yamaha should switch its focus to developing its 2019 bike after a tough start with the '18, Rossi says its “better to develop” the current bike as next year's won't be radically different.
“I don't think so, because in general the '16, '17, '18 are just numbers, especially with Yamaha,” he said.
“The bike is always improved step-by-step, the small details, but also the other factories [do the same].
“So it's not like Formula 1, that they change the rules and you have the '19 car that is completely different than the '18.
“It's small work of the small details that improve the complete package. Usually in MotoGP you work like this, so it's better to develop this one.”
