Valentino Rossi is using the same wet weather setup he had at the Silverstone MotoGP round as Yamaha’s engineers haven’t found a solution to the problems the 2017/18 YZR-M1 faces in the rain.

Sepang was another disaster for the works team as Rossi struggled to seventh place and 30s behind winner Andrea Dovizioso while Maverick Vinales was another eight seconds in arrears. Johann Zarco, on Rossi’s 2016 bike, suffers no such issues and stuck it on the podium.

“We knew we could be strong on the dry, but on wet conditions we keep on struggling too much. On Friday we were sixth so we tried everything on the bike, we changed completely the setup, but in vain. It was a demanding race and we struggled so much for the lack of the rear grip,” said Rossi, speaking at the track.

“It’s not comfortable to ride with the feeling that If you push too much, you finish in the gravel. So I tried to remained focused and finish the race earning as many points as possible. The tyres? Even compared to last season, this year it has been difficult with the Michelin and the problem is that we don’t have the solution.”  

Is Zarco’s podium on the 2016 M1 is a signal that the development went in the wrong direction? “The potential of the bike is not bad. The problem is the tyres don’t work properly. At the beginning of the season we suffered many problems, there was an improvement. We are using this bike from Silverstone. The good point is that we understood important things on dry conditions. It’s true there was also my incident to the leg in the middle, but if I have to do a balance i can say that it was a difficult season.”

Vinales was even less impressed: “I felt on the sighting lap, I was sliding everywhere so I said no way. Today was a very bad race, I didn't even check the position in the beginning because I thought I was last."

“I thought we made a big step in Phillip Island in the wet, and actually I felt really good during FP2. We were third in the results and every lap I did I felt in a good rhythm. In the race it was a totally different feeling, I was losing the rear in the corners and couldn’t lean, so it was very difficult to get a good rhythm and confidence.

“Anyway, I have to keep FP2 and the warm up on Phillip Island in mind and don’t think about today’s race too much, because we had some issues today, but we were fast in some other sessions.”