Vinales 'finds nothing' for rear after 3 years, 'turns' to front

After suffering the latest instalment in a long line of grip problems in the early stages of last Sunday's race, Maverick Vinales and Monster Yamaha tried to find solutions during Friday practice for the second Misano round.

The good news was that, while Tuesday's test had taken place with high grip levels, the return of Moto2 and Moto3 rubber (plus near-identical temperatures) made the Friday afternoon session comparable to the slippery race conditions.

The bad news was that Vinales reported no progress had been made and, after three years of trying to extract more grip from the rear of his M1, they will now switch attention to the front and 'try something very different'.

"Unluckily we didn't find anything!" said Vinales. "We tried to replay with a full fuel tank, same amount of power with the bike and we had the same problems. So tomorrow we will try something very different.

"We focussed a lot on the rear side, trying to find more grip. It’s three years where I haven't found more grip on the bike, so I don’t want to lose more time on the rear. We know that the rear works in one way and we need to try to live with that.

"Tomorrow we are going to concentrate a lot in the front tyre, trying to make it work, more grip, more stability and more turning. So we're going to try to see if with the front we can solve that problem."

Vinales finished the day a close fourth fastest after fitting new medium front and soft rear tyres at the very end of FP2, but one-lap speed is not his concern.

"The problem is that when I have grip, I can make the lap time very easy. But as soon as I lost the grip, I cannot turn the same, I cannot brake on the same points and I don't have confidence even with the front," he explained.

"So basically, my thinking is to work with the front. We tried to find more and more and more on the rear and are doing laps around because finally we didn't find nothing on the rear between these three years.

"Always we go back to our standard setting. So we don’t want to lose more time [changing the rear] and now we will try to gain the lap time by entering the corner and by corner speed.

"We need to concentrate on that. It's another way to do the lap time. But I need something different because I cannot continue with the same, knowing in the race I will suffer.

"This afternoon I tried to replay a lot the race conditions, luckily there was not incredible grip on the track so I could reproduce a lot and you can see on the lap times, they were not special.

"The good thing is that every run I went with full tank and I can do '32s, but was not enough. So tomorrow we need to find something more.

"We need to try to find the best when we have 20 litres [of fuel]. I think we are far away from that, especially in the front. Today what I feel is that when I try to push with the full tank, I lock a lot the front tyre, especially the hard tyre and the bike is moving a lot. So I cannot get the flow in the corners.

"So we're going to try to work very differently this weekend and see if we found something positive even if we are not straight away at the top in practice."

Yamaha had brought a range of new parts to the test, including a new chassis, carbon fibre swingarm and exhaust. The swingarm and exhaust were then given the nod for free practice, but in the lower grip levels the new parts offered no advantage over the standard set-up.

"On Tuesday everything was working, even if you put softer springs, harder springs, different swingarm, everything was working because there was grip on the track. So the bike was working well," Vinales said.

"But today without that kind of grip and on the race weekend where you have to push more, it seems complicated to use it. So I will go back to my standard bike and we will modify the front to try to understand how to gain grip in the front tyre and how to improve the lap times."

Team-mate Valentino Rossi was 15th fastest, but only 0.635s from the pace setting KTM of Brad Binder.