Vinales: Yamaha has to improve

Maverick Vinales feels his Thailand MotoGP charge was restrained by the familiar lack of traction during the opening laps of the race as he lost touch with the leaders to miss out in third place.

The Monster Yamaha rider has frequently been a slow starter in races this season struggling with a heavy fuel tank but once the load lightens he fights back as races progress.

Vinales: Yamaha has to improve

Maverick Vinales feels his Thailand MotoGP charge was restrained by the familiar lack of traction during the opening laps of the race as he lost touch with the leaders to miss out in third place.

The Monster Yamaha rider has frequently been a slow starter in races this season struggling with a heavy fuel tank but once the load lightens he fights back as races progress.

The same trend stuck at the Chang International Circuit as he repeated his 2018 result with third place but 1.380s off race-winner Marc Marquez at the chequered flag.

With the same problems hampering Vinales, the Spaniard has called on his Yamaha team to find solutions in order to help him with focus moving towards 2020 with the MotoGP title claimed by Marquez in Thailand.

“I am very happy and pleased about the result as we are getting a lot of consistency but now the team has to improve,” Vinales said. “We get a little bit of low grip, especially low grip on the rear at the beginning of the race, then it was a little bit better.

“But at the beginning I suffered a lot on the rear tyre. So they have to improve. Now it is time to do it as we are battling, we are trying to take out the maximum from the bike.

“We know how to do it so it is time to go to Japan which I think is a really good track for us and we will try to push even harder.”

Petronas Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo has avoided the issue with rear traction at the start of the race, as the MotoGP rookie lead the entire race up until the final lap in Thailand, and Vinales hopes to learn from the French rider to understand how he can tweak his own riding style to fix the problem.

“He is doing a really good job and is understanding the bike very well and is riding superbly,” Vinales said. “We have to understand how he rides because we can improve a lot on the bike and we will see.

“They did a great job today and I think they made a better setup than us so we need to understand what they did well and try to improve in Japan.”

Despite his frustrations Vinales has moved up to fourth place in the MotoGP riders’ standings ahead of Ducati’s Danilo Petrucci by a single point.

The Yamaha rider is also just four points off Suzuki’s Alex Rins who is currently in third place in the championship with four rounds to go.

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