Nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi considers himself lucky to have even finished today’s Jerez MotoGP race after an idea to try and fix rear-wheel spin ended up costing the Yamaha man front-end grip which put him tenth on the result sheet.

Rossi and team-mate Maverick Vinales have been suffering with corner-exit wheelspin all weekend - particularly in lefts - and his crew decided to alter the bike’s balance to try and get more life out of the medium rear Michelin but it put too much stress on the front and at the end, Rossi was lapping three seconds slower than winner Dani Pedrosa.

“A very, very difficult weekend and sincerely it was a very difficult race. We didn’t expect. We expected to be stronger, to be more competitive, especially when looking at the result of the past few years here in Jerez,” said Rossi, speaking at the track.

“We struggled always very much with the spinning in acceleration. It was the main problem for all of the weekend. For the race, we try to modify the balance first of all because we were worried for the life of the medium rear.

“Anyway, the hard was impossible to use. We tried to spin less. In the end it was worse. I lost feeling in the front. The race was also very difficult for braking, for entering in all places where during practice I was better.

“At the end we didn’t fix and maybe we made it worse. In the end, during the last six or seven laps, especially on the left, I start to have a very high vibration and I start to slow down three seconds per lap. At the end I was lucky to arrive.

“It’s easy to say we did a mistake. We risk but as always we had to try because in the warm-up I was ninth. I thought with that setting we could have tried to do a bit better.

“But we thought we could make a good race. This didn’t work. It looks like during this weekend our bike was always fighting with the tyres. We never found the good grip. We always have a lot of spin.”