What is happening at Yamaha, which is fighting to stay in the points ?
Rossi 8th, Viñales 10th, Zarco 14th and Syahrin 18th: the GP of Aragon turned out to be catastrophic for the Yamaha clan, whose riders seem to have lost the instructions for their M1 after 23 races without a win … "It’s a shame ", deplores Herve Poncharal for Tech3 while for the official team, Massimo Meregalli admits that" finishing in the top 10 is not a good result "… Debriefing.
The marks the 23rd race without a win for Yamaha, which has not won since: a first for more than 20 years in MotoGP … A new weekend to forget for Yamaha, whose best result on Sunday is a sad one. 8th place for Valentino Rossi…
- MNC special file :
- GP Aragon MotoGP 2018 :
- MotoGP 2018 season :
The Doctor – who admits not appreciating this circuit – is 15.199 seconds behind the winner, Marc Marquez, while Viñales (10th) and Zarco (14th) are respectively + 22.457 and + 32.345 seconds…
"We fight to the maximum to be in the top 10"
If we take the – soon to be famous? – developed by Jorge Lorenzo, it is clear that Yamaha is currently in the bottom of the wave in the Grand Prix World Championship…
But what is happening with the manufacturer whose pilots, team managers and all the staff seem petrified by this lack of results? ?
Valentino Rossi, Yamaha-Movistar (17th in qualifying and 8th in race) : "We modified the bike a lot and tried to work differently today. This morning I felt a little better on the bike and we were able to make some adjustments. The end of the race was better than expected. I expected, because I was not particularly fast but my pace was constant. I was able to recover a lot of positions – because I started far on the grid – and score points in the championship. Vue is better than yesterday. But on the other hand, our situation is quite difficult because we are fighting to the maximum to be in the top 10 at the moment "…
Site analysis : Valentino Rossi laboriously managed to score the points for 8th place at the GP of Aragon despite starting from 17th position, his worst qualification since his demotion to the …
This abysmal gap is all the more worrying as it has risen considerably compared to: Viñales, 4th and first Yamaha rider in 2017, was then only 5.256 seconds behind the leader (Marc Marquez, already). "Mack" was ahead of his teammate by a very short head (+ 5.882 seconds) and Zarco was 13.002 seconds in 9th place. Practically from single to triple … In the official team as at Tech3, no one is able to explain the reasons for these repeated poor performances: "we do not see any solutions", deplores Herve Poncharal, team manager of Tech3, who gradually resigns himself to mourning his goals of podiums, even victories, for his last season with Yamaha…
Will the next campaign at KTM be more favorable to the Bormes-les-Mimosas team and to Johann Zarco, who will embrace the status of factory driver in 2019? Not sure, at least initially, because the RC16 still has to improve. In this, it is little consolation for Johann to have been passed by Smith in the middle of the race. !
"We’ve discussed these things with Yamaha for at least 30 times"
The experienced Valentino Rossi, third in the provisional but who has never known such a period of crisis at Yamaha, believes that a "profound change" is necessary, exactly as the brand had done at the end of 2003 when the Doctor had landed from Honda…
At the time, the racing department had been completely revised by Yamaha who had placed in charge Masao Furusawa, one of the main architects of the success of the M1, to whom Rossi had a great deal of respect. "I don’t think there is a pilot problem: Maverick and I are fast and competitive", supports the n ° 46 who now wants more extensive changes than the few touch-ups made here and there since 2016.
"What bothers me is that it’s been at least 30 times that we have discussed these things with them", regrets the nine-time world champion who shows more and more impatience in the face of the manufacturer’s immobility Iwata … At 39 years old, the genius of the mountain pastures has no time to waste to reach his dream of 10th world title !
Added to this bad situation is the prospect of not making enough progress to correct the situation next year, as he fears after testing the prototype of the 2019 engine: "they have to improve it further, because the engine is part of the problem ", insists Rossi … It will take much more – and faster – to give a response in 2019 to the steamroller that the Marquez-Lorenzo binomial terribe risks constituting at Honda !
"I’m going to go home and try to relax"…
The incomprehension and disappointment can also be read on the face of Maverick Viñales, 5th in the provisional level on points with Jorge Lorenzo: "I’m disappointed with the way things are going", breaths the n ° 25 with clenched teeth. "I’m just going to go home, try to relax and start thinking about the next race"…
For Rossi’s team-mate, this 2018 Aragon GP is quite simply his worst experience riding the M1: a real cold shower when the official team had carried out convincing private tests a few weeks before on the same circuit..
"Impossible to reproduce the pace of our tests, despite identical tires", plague the Spaniard who explains that he was never able to go down to 1’48 during the race, while he was turning in 1’48.592 in free practice 4 with the same tires !
Johann Zarco: "I’m exhausted but I was very slow"
"It was a very difficult race," blows the French driver. “I had a good start and I was able to fight with Petrucci at the start, but very quickly that first group in front of me left. It was impossible to follow them and the more laps I did, the worse the feeling. We had too much sliding, we were fighting too much and we had no solution ".
"I tried a lot of things with my riding but couldn’t find anything that helped. It’s very difficult to finish a race like this because I’m exhausted and I was very slow … J ‘so hope that we will have better weekends on different tracks, also on circuits where the other riders haven’t done testing. I hope it can be a chance for me to do good results in order to do well. end the season "…
Massimo Meregalli: "the top 10 is not a good result"
"We had a very difficult race weekend," regrets the director of the Movistar Yamaha team. “Finishing right in the top 10 is not a good result, but it was within our possibilities given our grid positions. Vale and Maverick adjusted their settings during the morning warm-up and they found some small improvements ".
"It’s normal that our two drivers lost time in the first laps of the race as they were trying to get back to the front lines, but they did the maximum they could do today and they kept fighting. . This difficult weekend is over, so now we are preparing for the next race with the data collected during the pre-season test in Buriram ".
Herve Poncharal: "it’s a shame"
"We arrived in Aragón optimistic and confident, without aiming for the podium but we thought we could fight for a result in the top 10, which is currently the level we have", underlines the team manager of Tech3. “Unfortunately we leave Aragon with a feeling of bitterness … It’s really a shame. I think it’s Johann’s worst result when he finished a race, except maybe Misano last year when he ran out of fuel on the last lap. This shows how far we are…
Basically our two guys got off to a good start, they had a good pace in the first few laps, then they lost pace, more dramatically for Hafizh then for Johann, but they both lost speed. Honestly, it was difficult to follow the race. We are competitors, we are fighters and to see such a race is something that makes you think and really sad.
Johann said he was exhausted as he had fought for victory, as he finished 14th … I think the whole team feels the same. It is a very difficult time. I don’t remember and I can’t believe that we fought for pole position, for the podiums in the same season and that we are now fighting for points. It’s incredible. I don’t think the tire situation had anything to do with it because the race winner was on a soft rear tire, Iannone was on medium-soft like us, so on that aspect I think we were on point..
But there are still things to understand. I was also very excited to see Johann pass Petrucci and fight in a group where I thought he would stay for a long time. I was delighted to see Hafizh off to a good start and to be with Valentino and ahead of the other rookies, but unfortunately it didn’t last long and we just lost some ground. It’s more than a shame, it’s something we have to understand because I don’t think Johann and Hafizh deserve this result. I’m sorry for our partners and for the people who follow us and are behind us.
Clearly, we are in a crisis right now. I don’t think we have the tools to recover quickly. We can just hope that the next circuits will be more favorable … Johann and Hafizh had a great test in Thailand this winter, but that was a long time ago so I don’t know. We have to refocus and continue to attack, but now we have to pack our bags for the four overseas races and the feeling is that everything is going to be very heavy to pack….
I’m unhappy, I’m sad, and I’m angry because we’re not where we need to be and I don’t think the level of the team is what we see. But clearly, race after race, it’s almost the same comment, almost the same result. We have seen Johann in the past being very aggressive and doing incredible passes during the race, but we lost that. We haven’t seen that for many, many races. He just seems to be in pain and struggling. We seem to be out of place. It’s a shame"…
Lin Jarvis: "we are going through a serious crisis"
"We are working for 2019 and we have already done a test in Aragon to test the new engine and changes to the electronics, but it is difficult to say when the final version will arrive," the Yamaha MotoGP team manager told us. Italian colleagues from. “The next test will take place after the last Grand Prix in Valencia and we know very well that we cannot start next season under these conditions. We have four to five months to develop the bike”.
"I cannot say whether a radical change like the one in 2004 is needed (with, editor’s note), because the situation was completely different fourteen years ago," recalls Lin Jarvis. "But we certainly need to make significant investments because we need new people with new ideas to raise the level of our engineers. We are going through a serious crisis.".
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