With engine development freezing until early 2021 for everyone except Aprilia and KTM, Yamaha’s performance deficit vis-à-vis its competitors – and especially Ducati – remains substantial.
This is reinforced in Qatar by the one-kilometer main straight from Losail. The fastest Ducati was 354 km / h on Friday, while the top speed of Vinales was 346.1 km / h. This, along with the M1’s fights in pack races, forced Vinales to focus much of his pre-season work on race starts – something he continued to work on Friday to improve.
The M1 also struggles when riding on Dunlop rubber that was relocated from the Moto2 class.
When asked by Motorsport.com if the 2021 bike cured this, Vinales claimed it was too early to say – but was encouraged by his pace in poor grip on Friday and is confident of getting his package on To be able to improve on Saturday.
“I don’t know, it’s too early to understand if [grip] Problems are gone or not because we will only see them in the race, ”he said. “It is certainly not the best track because if we get stuck at the start, we will have to suffer a lot to fight back.
Maverick Vinales, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“But we are working on it. Sure, tomorrow I have to improve the brakes so that I can overtake a little more, but overall I know the track. I feel like I have a couple of places where I can overtake – especially in section three where we’re pretty fast.
“For tomorrow we have to improve the balance of the bike a little. We will surely improve. Today was just a little rough and the times were there, so it’s pretty nice. “
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Vinales also felt that he had improved his race starts but he has yet to take another step before Sunday.
Teammate Quartararo revealed he was struggling to be fast on the final stretch of the Losail circuit and admitted that he cannot effectively use the Yamaha’s famous cornering speed.
“I had to drive really well today because the conditions weren’t like the test,” he said. “The last sector was strange for me because I was very fast in the last test.
“And compared to the test and today we’re losing a lot, we can’t really keep up with speed and make a good exit, we have to develop the same style as the red bikes [Ducati]. And we don’t have that power and top speed, so we lose a quarter of a second in the last sector.
“That means we have to improve the last sector of something and we hope that the condition of the track can make the move in the last sector.”