Maverick Vinales has called on Yamaha to provide him with a “better bike” for wet conditions, after his “horrible” M1 saw him struggled to 11th in MotoGP Malaysian Grand Prix qualifying.
Vinales ended Yamaha's 25-race win drought last weekend at Phillip Island, but was on strong form in the dry practice sessions at Sepang this weekend.
However, rain for qualifying saw the Spaniard struggle as he typically has done in wet conditions over the past two seasons, and was 1.7 seconds off of the pole time in 11th.
Vinales says the bike was “working horrible”, and admits he “could not ride” in the wet conditions of qualifying.
When asked why he struggled on Saturday, he said: “I don't know, for sure we didn't have a good attempt in the rain conditions.
“The bike was working horrible, so for sure it was not the tyre, it was the bike set-up. So the team needs to provide me with a better bike in the wet, a better set-up and that's it.
“I've always felt fast on the wet, so it's only with this Yamaha I can't be able to do good laptimes.
“So on dry we set-up quite good the bike, but on wet I honestly could not ride. It was just so difficult.”
Teammate Valentino Rossi faired substantially better in qualifying, the Italian putting his Yamaha third on the timesheets – though will start second due to poleman Marc Marquez's penalty.
Rossi was pleased with his pace in both wet and dry conditions, though believes Vinales and Marquez were “stronger” than him, while he also praised event organisers for moving the race forward by two hours to avoid the worst of the weather.
“At one point in the box we think maybe no qualifying because the forecast said it was to rain very hard to 8pm,” said Rossi.
“So if you see the combined free practice times, I'm ninth so I have to start from the third row. So it's a lot better from the front because it's a lot better for the race, and also I feel good with the bike.
“On the wet I can ride in the good way, that is not so bad. Now we have to wait, we have to wait for the condition because for me it's a clever choice to move the race at 1pm because we will have more chance at a dry race, but more importantly we will have more chance to race because if we wait to 3pm maybe we don't race.
“So this is good, now we wait, we see. On the dry I'm not so bad, especially Friday I was strong.
“Today we work more with the used tyre and my pace was quite good, but especially Marquez and Vinales were stronger than me. So we need to work and try to improve tomorrow.”
Discussion about this post