Yamaha: Why Vinales used 'standard' brakes

Valentino Rossi, Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli switched over to an evolution Brembo front braking system, after overheating problems at the opening Red Bull Ring MotoGP round.

But Yamaha has confirmed that Maverick Vinales remained on the standard Brembo system, which dramatically exploded at the midway stage of Sunday's Styrian MotoGP, forcing the Spaniard to bail off his bike at 230km/h.

Clearly, Yamaha would not have given Vinales the option to continue with the standard system if such a failure was thought possible.

"What happened to Maverick was not something we could expect," Monster Yamaha team director Massimo Meregalli told the official MotoGP website.

Nonetheless, it did happen.

"We chose to use the, let's call it, standard brake system. Because Brembo brought an evolution and Valentino, Fabio and Franco used this system," Meregalli added.

"Maverick didn’t, because Maverick never suffered the very high temperatures that the others suffered last weekend and also when he tried the new system, he didn't have the feeling he was looking for.

"So for these two reasons we decided to use the conventional system. Probably because he was behind other riders, he couldn’t cool down the system and after the fifth lap he felt something but tried to manage.

"Unfortunately what happened, happened, but luckily he is fine and that is the most important thing.

"Now we will try to understand exactly what happened but it won't be easy because the bike is not in good condition. But I expect by Misano we will receive more information from our Japanese engineers."

But even the 'evo' braking system was not a perfect fix to the overheating issues for all the other Yamaha riders.

This is what Valentino Rossi, Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli had to say about their brakes after the race...

Valentino Rossi:

Rossi said the brakes were 'not fantastic' in race one, but he 'didn't have a particular problem' in race two, after switching to the new system this weekend.

"About the brakes, I had some problems last week. This week we worked hard with Brembo, we used different material from Friday. In the first race today, the brakes were not fantastic, but in the second race the brakes were good and I didn't have any particular problems.

"This track is very severe with the brakes. Everybody suffers. If you see, everybody has big air ducts in the brakes, also the other manufacturers.

"But it looks like Yamaha suffers more, also because we try to gain in braking what we lose in the straight, because our bike is slow, but it's good in braking, so we try to brake very hard, and we stress the brakes a lot.

"This is the reason why Yamaha suffers more with this problem."

Fabio Quartararo:

The world championship leader suffered persistent braking problems during last Sunday's races, prompting Brembo to suggest the switch to the newer spec system for the second Austrian round. But Quartararo continued to have problems on Sunday.

"During the race, it was at the maximum. The lever was coming every time more soft. So it was arriving to one moment that was going to have no brakes. So really dangerous, and no confidence."

Franco Morbidelli:

Petronas Yamaha team-mate Franco Morbidelli also struggled with overheating, even after moving to the newer spec brakes.

"This is a track where you struggle quite a lot with the brakes. Yamaha has been struggling even more… The clear thing is that we struggled. The reason, I cannot tell because I don’t know.

"For sure one reason could be that in order to catch up with the other guys [due to a lower top speed], we need to squeeze a little bit more the potential in the areas where we can squeeze, so braking, corner speed.

"[At this track] we brake hard for more time [than at other tracks]. Corner one, corner three, corner four, you brake very hard and for a long time. You overheat the brakes. Moreover, if you are behind people you even stress them even more.

"We’ve been advised by Brembo to use that [evo] system this weekend because of the problems that Fabio had in the race and that also other riders were having. So we’ve been advised to use that system and we used that basically all weekend.

"I have to say that the Brembo people were very professional and very kind with us. They were just trying to give us the biggest help they could. So they were listening to our problems and they were trying to solve them. So, big thanks to Brembo.

"Last year we didn’t have many problems about this [braking] matter but also MotoGP is going forward every year and getting faster and faster. The performance is going ahead every year, so maybe this year we put the brakes more into stress compared to last year, just because we are faster and we stress more the brakes."

Although open competition is allowed, Brembo is the chosen brake supplier by all MotoGP teams.