Yamaha haven’t won a MotoGP race since the Catalan Grand Prix in June and Valentino Rossi is now showing concerns that the 2017 YZR-M1 won’t be ready for the Valencia test in November. Is there a crisis in the Movistar squad.

After the double Hara-kiri at Motegi two weeks ago with both Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo crashing one after the other, The Doctor’s recovery at Phillip Island from 15th to second turned into a success what seemed like disaster.

“In Japan I was competitive but we collected zero points.” said the Italian. “In Australia I was fast in the wet on Friday but we made a mistake and my lap times were not counted, while Saturday was the most frustrating day of the season. I have some weak points, the same is valid for the team and when there are some difficult conditions and we need to take some risky choices, we struggle. But in the race we redeemed ourselves.”

The first 10 laps of race at Philipp island with 13 overtakes can be considered a mirror of the Doctor’s career of the past ten years. Every time that he seems struggling and people criticize him that he is finished, he is back with an impressive result. “The sun, a higher temperature and the work done in the warm up boosted me and I knew I could fight for the podium with Marquez and Crutchlow,” said Rossi.

“I started very focused because I didn’t want to make the same mistake as in Motegi. A step at a time I recovered positions. When I saw Marc crashing out I thought I could win because in the warm up I had a better pace than Crutchlow, but he is very fast on this track and in the second part of the race he was faster.”

Lorenzo was another story. The Mallorcan fought through qualifying one but it was the only good lap over the Australian race weekend: finishing sixth and 20’125 behind winner Cal Crutchlow and 16 seconds behind his team-mate is not a normal result for the five-time world champion.

The Spaniard is struggling, particularly in the wet, cold and mixed conditions and everybody hopes that the situation will change already from next round in Malaysia.

But still something is missing.

If we re-wind the season, the Yamaha M1 seems to be the most balanced bike of the starting grid starting from the winter tests. The results of first rounds of the season speak for themselves, considering it won five of the first seven GPs with Lorenzo dominating in Qatar, France and Italy and Rossi winning at Jerez and Barcelona. This was the last race won by a Yamaha. What has happened in the other nine rounds?

Electronics
Since the beginning of the season it seems that Yamaha had reached a good understanding of the new spec-ECU, compared to Honda who were struggling. But once HRC got their heads around it, they started began to make strides while Yamaha appear to have stagnated.

Engine
Two broke at Mugello. As Rossi explained, the reason was to be seen in the bump at the end of the front straight as the winglets tend to keep the front down while the rear tyre raises because of the bump. As they are on the revlimit, the new electronics were not sophisticated to take care of the motor as the engine over-revved for a fraction of second. As a result, the Yamaha engineers were more conservative and they took away around 200-300rpm from the top end. Maio Meregalli, Yamaha Sports Director, confirmed this approach.

Tyres
The Michelin tyres have complicated – or made more competitive - the season and every GP now starts from zero as the tyre could suit one riding style or a manufacturer better than another. But in Australia, Rossi stressed another issue. “Even if I had started from the second row, I couldn’t have reached Crutchlow. He was faster in the second part of the race. This is not the first time that we struggle a lot in the second part of the race.

“We started to have this kind of problems after the summer break and it had already happened in Brno, Misano, Aragon and Australia. Even the Suzuki was faster than us in the final part of the GP. We suffer with the rear tyre, it spins too much, and for this reason we struggle when the tyre drops.”

Track conditions
As it happened in Australia, the Yamaha is struggling in the cold and mixed conditions, typical for this time of the year at Phillip Island. “The main issue is that we are not fast enough, we are not competitive,” stated Rossi. “In these cold and mixed conditions I never succeeded to have a good feeling with the bike. It’s uncomfortable. You have the feeling to take so many risks but then you look at the time sheets and you go slow.

“The weather conditions have been crazy. After the rain, the track has dried at least seven times. In Q1 it seemed like we were in January with the thermometer registering eight degrees. Ten minutes later the sun dried the track. We are a lot in trouble with the front tyre. We are not able to get it up to temperature.”

Lorenzo didn’t do much better, making it out of Q1 but ending up slowest in Q2 to line up 12th on the grid. “I was slow and the tyres didn’t get into temperature,” was his analysis.

“I was not comfortable to push due to the mixed track conditions and the cold temperature. With the rain tyres I was in the middle of the classification, but with the slick I didn’t do a significant step forward. We reached the second qualifying luckily, because some of the riders put in the mixed tyres when the track wasn‘t ready yet. That‘s why we were able to finish in second and get through to Q2, but in that session with the slicks was probably the worst scenario to try to make the step I needed in these difficult and dangerous conditions.

The Riders
The internal fight between Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo to finishin front of the seems to affect the results. In Japan Rossi had no choice but to pushhard if he wanted to try and keep the championship open. He was at the limit and crashed. Lorenzo’s incident was different because he was second and the podium finish was at hand when he crashed, losing 20 important points. Rossi is currently second with 216 points, while Lorenzo is third with 192. For Rossi, it is a question of honour to finish in front of his teammate. But he hasn’t spared Yamaha some criticisms, blaming them of not having worked hard on the development of the bike throughout the season.

Lorenzo is a different story, the rider that we saw at Phillip Island is not the three-time MotoGP world champion who has been paid €24 million by Ducati to bring back the crown to Borgo Panigale. As The Spaniard admitted himself, with cold and mixed conditions: “I was not comfortable to push because of the ghost of the past injuries. When the asphalt is cold and there is not so much grip, I struggle more than the other riders the Michelin hard option.

“I’m a precise rider but in these conditions you have to be more aggressive like Rossi or Pol Espargaro. I cannot change my riding style after 15-20 years: I had the feeling to crash and the target was to exit every single corner, not to push. I look forward to race in Malaysia where we can win.”

The 2017 bike
Valentino Rossi hasn’t yet tested the 2017 bike and the Italian is starting to be worried.
“We are struggling in the second part of the race. We will need to consider this aspect for the new bike. But is there a new bike?” he said after the Australian Grand Prix. “We haven’t tested it yet and in this moment we don’t know if it will be available for the Valencia test. We hope so…”