Frustrated Vinales insists poor Jerez showing "not our fault"

Vinales, who won the first two races of the championship yet crashed last time out at COTA, struggled to run with the pace-setting Hondas throughout the Jerez weekend and qualified only fourth.

He was joint-quickest in the Sunday warm-up but could not fight for victory in the race, taking the chequered flag in sixth place, 24.6s off race winner Dani Pedrosa (Honda).

“Today we bring home 10 really important points for the championship,” Vinales said. “[It] was really difficult.

“Good feeling in the warm-up, I was feeling - maybe I can do, I can start and go with Dani and Marc [Marquez] and fight until the end. But in the race I had no feeling on the front.”

The Spaniard refused to go into much detail on the front tyre problem, but did note: “What I say is that 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. You can understand.

“Finally, we are losing so many points and it was, I think, not our fault, so let's see.”

Asked if he believed the problems to be Michelin's fault, Vinales said: “I cannot tell.”

Saving the crashes

The Yamaha rider had been suffering with issues in left-hand corners earlier in the weekend, but Vinales reckoned his crew had made a lot of progress with the bike on Sunday morning.

“We improved so much the bike, I was feeling 'okay, 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.”

Following his crash at COTA, Vinales had said the tyre in that race “was not as good as this morning” - and, two weeks on, the Spaniard insisted his woes at Jerez were of a similar nature.

Having nearly crashed with Andrea Iannone early on, Vinales apologised to his rival from Suzuki, saying he “could do nothing” after losing the front.

He added: “Already 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 percent, that's why today I saved the crashes.”

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont