Movistar Yamaha Seal Sixth and Seventh Place in Spielberg Race
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14/08/2017
Race
Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Valentino Rossi had the throttle fully open at the NeroGiardini Motorrad Grand Prix von Österreich, as he contended in a seven-rider fight at the front in the early stages of the race. Rossi lost some time, running wide in turn 1 in an incident but he put his head down to collect crucial championship points taking seventh place.
Starting the race from seventh on the grid, Rossi slotted into fifth place storming towards turn 1, and quickly fought his way to fourth past his teammate. He withstood the pressure Viñales put on him in the opening laps, as he chased the leading trio.
The Doctor reached the back of Marc Marquez’s bike on lap eight, bringing Zarco with him, but encountered a set-back. A block pass from the fellow Yamaha rider pushed the Italian back to sixth behind the chasing Dani Pedrosa. Running wide in turn 1, with 15 laps to go, Rossi soon fell back behind Viñales to seventh. He was eager to follow his teammate, but was unable to keep up a consistent pace in the high 124s and low 125s, and decided to focus on bringing home his bike in seventh place, 8.995s from first.
Today's race results see Rossi 9 points behind teammate Viñales. The Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team holds second place in the team rankings, with a 22-point margin to the front. In the Constructor championship, Yamaha holds the top spot. They are on equal points with Honda, each having earned 211 in total and both scored four GP wins, but Yamaha earned one more second place so far this season.
The Movistar Yamaha MotoGP team will have a private test at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli next week on Sunday, August 20th. After that the team will be back in action in two weeks time for the Octo British Grand Prix at the Silverstone Circuit.
Valentino Rossi
Position: 7th - Championship: 4th - Points: 141
"Today the problems started after ten or twelve laps. Unfortunately, we stressed the rear tyre too much, so the rear tyre dropped a lot and we lost a lot of performance and speed. From that moment on it was very difficult to control the bike and I also made a mistake on the brakes. I didn’t have the pace in the second half of the race, I suffered too much from a lack of grip. It’s a shame because we worked a lot, but it looks like it's the same problem as we had in Jerez and Barcelona. When we use the rear tyre too much, the bike becomes slower and more difficult to ride in the second half of the race. For sure we have to work a lot mechanically and also on the electronics to improve this problem."
Massimo Meregalli
Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - Team Director
"We had anticipated that this would be a challenging race, that would be hard on the tyres. We decided to go with the hard rear spec this morning, but in the end this didn’t pay off as we had hoped. The start of the race went well: with both riders being able to compete at the front of the field, but after 10 laps they started to suffer from a lack of grip from the rear tyre. It was unfortunate that this cost us some valuable points in the championship challenge, but the riders did well to hold on to sixth and seventh place and bring home the best results possible under these circumstances. The team will work hard to find a solution for the issue before the race at Silverstone, at the private test in Misano next weekend."
