Yamaha says sorry
Factory bosses apologise to struggling riders
Asenior member of the Movistar Yamaha has described the situation in the team as being ‘at the bottom of their crisis,’ after a disastrous weekend at the Red Bull Ring saw Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales slump to new lows in their struggle with the 2018 M1 machine.
In fact, so bad was the situation at the Austrian Grand Prix that senior management from the Japanese manufacturer took the unprecedented step on Saturday evening of standing up in front of the assembled media at an impromptu press conference and issuing an apology to their riders. Addressing both riders and journalists, M1 project leader Kouji Tsuya said: “We are struggling with the acceleration performance of the bike and to make the power delivery more precise. We knew that Austria was always going to be a difficult track for us because of this. We have to apologise to the riders because of our performance.”
And while Rossi was eventually able to salvage something from his worst qualifying performance in two years by riding from 14th to sixth in the race, he was adamant that he still has complete confidence in Yamaha’s management. But he admitted that he’s not expecting things to get better any time soon.
Rossi said: “It’s very different to recalibrate your expectations, because every time I leave home for a race I want to fight for the podium. But we suffered and
I had to give the same level of concentration just to finish sixth or eighth.
“I can’t say that I don’t have faith in the engineers. I work for Yamaha and my work is to make the most of what I have. But unfortunately everything after that point isn’t my job. It’s something that the engineers have to fix themselves. But we can improve with these guys, we just have to work in the right areas.”
There may be no light at the end of the tunnel in the immediate future for the team either, with the question now being asked if it’s even possible to fix the acceleration woes of this year’s bike with electronics alone. Forced to stick with a frozen specification of engine until the end of the season, it might be that Rossi and Viñales have no option but to scrap their hopes for this year and instead concentrate on 2019.
Rossi continued: “For me the chassis of our bike is still very good, but the engine needs to be changed as well as the electronics. The Honda and the Ducati have changed a lot in the last year and half and that’s a combination of engine and electronics, although it’s hard for us to understand what percentage is which.”