Yamaha's Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales were left mystified by their loss of form in the Misano MotoGP race, despite showing podium pace in practice on Saturday.
Both Rossi and Vinales have battled all season with numerous problems relating to the M1's electronics and its engine, though the latter felt the Japanese marque had made a breakthrough at a test at Misano prior to Silverstone.
Indeed, Vinales qualified third while threatening pace to fight at the front, which he believed would allow him just to sit in the slipstream of the leaders for much of the 27 laps before unleashing his strong late-race form.
Feeling “really happy” after the start despite dropping from third to fifth, Vinales says he experienced “as always” a loss of feeling from what he experienced on Saturday and failed to advance on fifth.
“It's been difficult, it's been difficult because after the start I was really happy actually” he said.
“After the second corner I thought 'Ok, now I take the slipstream from the fast guys' and I keep it until the end because in FP4 I felt I could do it.
“Anyway, as always, we have quite a big drop in feeling from Saturday to Sunday.
“So we have to check better what is going on with the bike, but still it's difficult.
“It's a year and a half we are suffering in the races, and we need to understand still which is the point where we lose.”
Teammate Rossi, who was a lowly seventh in his home race, branded the loss in form a “great shame”, claiming the set-up on his M1 remained unchanged from what he rode on Saturday.
“It's a great shame, because yesterday I was not too bad, and sincerely I expected to be quite competitive to try to do a great race, also because here there is a lot of people, a great atmosphere.
“But unfortunately from this morning we don't have any more the speed, I suffer very much, I was a lot slower compared to Saturday.
“And at the end, the bike, the tyre, the setting was exactly the same. So now we try to investigate, it's a problem that unfortunately happens to the Yamaha and we need to understand why.
“In warm-up we modify something, but in the afternoon my bike was exactly like Saturday and unfortunately… will be very important to understand why, because if not we cannot fix.
“Aragon [the next round] is one of the worst track for us during the season. So I don't want to be so pessimistic, but I expected to be stronger here this weekend than in Aragon.
“So maybe it will be a long weekend.”
Yamaha is currently in the midst of its longest losing streak in the premier class since the 1997/'98 seasons, with 22 grands prix passing since Rossi's Assen triumph last year. Should it extend at Aragon, it will be its worst winless streak since it entered the premier class in 1973.
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