Championship leader Maverick Vinales endured a difficult first day of running for the Catalan Grand Prix, the Yamaha rider just 16th fastest on the combined timesheets.
None of the four Yamaha-mounted runners on the grid attended the private test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya just after the French Grand Prix, but this did not unsettle Vinales in this morning’s first practice.
The Spaniard felt relatively comfortable on his YZR-M1 and was able to post the sixth quickest time of the session, albeit one second off the pace.
However, Vinales struggled in the hotter afternoon session, the Yamaha rider encountering a lack of rear traction on new and used rubber – an issue which has left him perplexed.
“This morning I was feeling okay, the bike was working good,” said the 2012 Moto3 Catalan Grand Prix winner, who was 1.4 seconds off the pace at the end of second practice.
“We went out on soft tyres and the bike was behaving really well. We did three or four laps that were okay and I wasn’t far from the top, but it wasn’t the same in the afternoon and I don’t know why.
“We usually have a very stable bike, but it wasn’t working well. Every time I went on track, on a new tyre or a used one, I was sliding a lot and couldn’t do anything about it; it was something very strange, it’s difficult to say anything about it.
Vinales suffered similar woes at the equally low-grip Jerez circuit last month, and Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi was concerned of a repeat of the team’s poor Spanish Grand Prix performance ahead of this weekend’s seventh round of the season.
Following Friday practice, Vinales also expressed his dislike for the circuit’s new chicane, which was installed for this year in a bid to improve the safety of the final section of track following Luis Salom’s fatal accident in a Moto2 practice session last year.
Vinales felt the chicane was unsafe, particularly in the event of a crash as a rider and their motorcycle can end up in a precarious position in the complex – an issue the Yamaha rider reckons could worsen come qualifying when riders are less willing to ease off on a flying lap.
“For me, it’s dangerous,” he told Autosport.com on Friday.
“It’s FP1, FP2 and if you saw the bike is in the middle, you cut the grass, OK, slow down then you don’t do your lap.
“In qualifying you’re not going to slow down, you’re going to push because you are coming for the hotlap.
“The rider is in the middle (of the chicane), the bike is in the middle, the marshals are in the middle.
“If you crash in the second corner, you stay in the middle. If you crash in the first corner of the chicane, you go in the middle. It’s very strange.”
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