Dovizioso: When I stopped in pitlane I realised it was my fault

The Italian, who suffered dashboard and handlebar issues before his engine shut down completely at Mandalika, forgot to unlock the front holeshot device for his RNF Yamaha in Argentina.

That meant the fork didn't 'release' under braking for turn one and instead remained compressed. Unsure of the cause, Dovizioso pitted at the end of the lap before realising the error.

“I’m very disappointed, this never happened to me," Dovizioso said. "I did a mistake and forgot to unlock the front start device.

"I locked it, but didn’t move the lever that I need to move to unload [the device] at the first corner. I didn’t think about that, though everything was blocked [solid], but when I stopped in the pitlane I realised this was my fault."

Dovizioso then lost three laps in the pits while his crew tried to unlock the device.

“Andrea forgot to pull his front start device handle back to the position that it should be, because then you can unlock the front, so he couldn’t do that and it stayed completely down," said team manager Wilco Zeelenberg.

"In the pitlane, we can’t make that [braking] force to unlock it easily, as it needs speed and forces, so we struggled to unlock it. But he directly realised that he forgot to flip the lever. So, that was his race.”

'This is the tension'

Dovizioso, who has scored just two points so far this year, added: "I’m really sorry to the team, because this is something that doesn’t need to happen, but it happens when you are not relaxed.

"I’m not comfortable, I’m not riding in a smooth way, not using the best potential of the bike and this is the tension. You want to do everything at the maximum from the start and I did this mistake."

After he returned to the track, Dovizioso went on to set a best race lap 0.264s behind Monster Yamaha's reigning world champion Fabio Quartararo.

"At least, my pace was pretty good in the end," Dovizioso said. "But in any case, I can’t be happy about this weekend. I hope we can be closer in Austin.”

While front ride-height devices will be banned from next year, single-use holeshot devices will remain.

Monster Yamaha's Franco Morbidelli also suffered technical issues during the race, in the form of a puncture.

On the other side of the garage, rookie team-mate Darryn Binder took his A-spec machine to 18th place. In a repeat of the Qatar season-opener, the South Africa spent the final laps battling with fellow rookie Remy Gardner.

“I was really happy with how things went this morning. I felt like I made a good step in warm up, but unfortunately in the race, I wasn’t able to keep the same feeling," Binder said. "It was a really difficult race for me."

“Darryn was doing a good job, but he was disappointed, because he said the grip level in the race was much lower than during the warm up," confirmed Zeelenberg. "Of course, the track temperature was much higher and he struggled to ride the bike like he did in the morning.

"I think he did quite a good job, of course he expected a bit more, as he was feeling so well in the warm up. P18 for a rookie is not bad, although he was hoping for one point.

"Anyway, he brought the bike back home, fought with many riders and even passed Remy two or three times again in the last lap. Now we are packing up, looking forward to Austin.”

Prior to the race, both RNF riders appeared to have some kind of issue with their tyre warmer generators on the grid.