Movistar Yamaha’s Maverick Vinales believes the front tyre issues that kept him to sixth place in yesterday’s Jerez MotoGP were not the fault of his team as he was substantially slower than in warm-up using the same hard/medium combination.

Vinales struggled with grip for the entire race and was braking 30 metres early in some places - nearly colliding with Andrea Iannone when his YZR-M1 refused to do what was asked of it.

“In the morning I feel really good, everyone could see my laptimes were really constant, good on the line, good on the braking point. This afternoon was totally different and a disaster on the braking points. I was braking 30 metres earlier than this morning. Finally, we are losing so many points and it was, I think, not our fault, so let’s see,” said Vinales, speaking at the track.

“We improved so much the bike, I was feeling, ‘OK, I can go to win’ because I was feeling great on the bike. Still I felt I could push a little bit more. But then in the race I had really good grip on the rear, but impossible to ride the bike on the front.

“From the first lap, when I had the moment with Iannone, and then all the braking points on the right-side corner I was really slow. I nearly crashed two or three times in corner 11.

“I know I crashed in Austin for the same problem as today but today I have the luck that I was not so fast as in Austin, I had some riders in the front and I could not push 100 per cent, that’s why today I saved the crashes.”