How MotoGP's title favourite crumbled

While last weekend's pulsating Australian Grand Prix was perhaps the moment where Marc Marquez realistically made sure of his fourth MotoGP title in five seasons, it also marked the official end to Maverick Vinales' hopes of scooping a first premier class crown.

Ironically, Phillip Island was one of Vinales' better showings aboard the Yamaha for quite some time, marking his first podium finish since Silverstone and his first stint in the lead of a race since Mugello back in June.

But, with Marquez marching to a sixth victory of 2017, a third place finish - 0.027 seconds behind team-mate Valentino Rossi - was not enough to keep Vinales in the game, leaving him 50 points back from Marquez with exactly that number left to play for.

Even were he to win both Sepang and Valencia, with Marquez failing to score (and Andrea Dovizioso amassing fewer than 33 points), he'd fall short on countback, with five victories to his credit versus six for Marquez.

So what exactly has changed since early June, when Vinales led the world championship by 26 points and Marquez was just a speck in the Yamaha golden boy's rear view, a full 37 points in arrears?

Yamaha's M1 was widely acknowledged to have been the all-round best bike in MotoGP last year, with Marquez's sheer virtuosity aboard the inferior Honda, combined with the inconsistency of Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo, serving to deny the Iwata firm a title it should have won.

The signs from last year's post-race Valencia test - when Lorenzo switched to Ducati and Vinales arrived from Suzuki to take his place - seemed to indicate that Yamaha was firmly on course to avenge its 2016 defeat, and that its new kid on the block was well placed to lead its charge.

Indeed, after topping all three pre-season tests at the start of the year, Vinales arrived in Qatar for the opening round of the championship in the slightly unusual position of being expected to win on his Yamaha debut.

Win he did, though, after an epic battle with Ducati's Dovizioso, and after a second victory on the trot two weeks later Argentina, the scoreline read Vinales 50, Marquez 13.

Everything was going according to plan, and despite two tough rounds at Austin and Jerez that allowed Marquez to close in again, the pendulum swung back towards Vinales at Le Mans, where he recorded a third triumph in five races, and Mugello, where he only narrowly missed out on beating an inspired Dovizioso.

June's Barcelona race is probably the point where Vinales' challenge began to unravel, as it marked the second time in four races that both the works Yamahas finished behind one or more of their satellite Tech3 cousins, the very bikes discarded by the factory at the end of 2016.

That was when the second of three different frames Vinales has raced this year was introduced, and it was one that he simply didn't gel with, not allowing him to change direction or pick up the throttle as aggressively as he was used to doing with the first chassis.

Over the next four races, before the 2018 frame was introduced in time for Silverstone, he scored a meagre 39 points, against 70 for Marquez and 68 for Dovizioso.

"We changed the chassis, swing-arm, many things," explained Vinales in Phillip Island when asked to pinpoint what had been lost about the bike he dominated the pre-season tests and the early part of the year with.

"But anyway in the [pre-season] tests, I felt much more comfortable, like in my own style. After Montmelo [Barcelona], we started to change the chassis, I started to lose the feeling, especially with the front.

"We had some up and downs, and this confused us a lot. It was important to do these mistakes so we don't do them next year"
Maverick Vinales

"I lost a lot of confidence. It's important also the confidence with the front when you don't have traction - you can make up for it a little bit with the front. But during the season we got some bad feelings with the front."

There have been suggestions that Vinales - lacking the experience of both being a top team rider and the rigours of developing a bike over the course of a season - allowed the development process to get away from him, with Rossi taking charge and demanding that Yamaha produce a new chassis after its Jerez debacle.

It would only be natural for the 22-year-old new boy to defer to the elder statesman of the MotoGP paddock when it came to technical matters, as well as for the team to heed the latter's advice should it conflict with that of the former.

This isn't a mistake Vinales is likely to repeat next season, with the confidence of knowing what worked for him and what didn't during a 2017 campaign that will have made him a much stronger and well-rounded competitor.

Asked if he would take a stronger lead in the development process in 2018, Vinales replied: "I think so, it's very important to recover the feeling we had at the beginning of the season and then start from there."

A lack of rear traction has been Yamaha's big weakness this year, a characteristic that was exacerbated by the low grip on offer at Jerez and Barcelona, and by stop-start track layouts like Austria and Motegi.

At more flowing tracks, like Phillip Island, where the bike spends a long time at full lean, the problem is masked to an extent. That explains why both Vinales and Rossi were able to fight for the win there, while Ducati - its GP17's trump card is strong acceleration but still lacks when it comes to turning - was completely at sea.

Yamaha's other Achilles' heel has been its wet-weather performances, a point that Vinales publicly raised after converting pole to a disappointing fourth at Misano, and again after a disastrous Friday practice at Aragon and most recently at Motegi, where the Spaniard all but conceded his title hopes were gone.

There was a glimmer of hope at Phillip Island, where Vinales was second-fastest in a wet warm-up session, that Yamaha might have found its way in the rain, an encouraging sign for 2018. And, for all the difficult moments, Vinales - who has now turned his focus to beating Dovizioso to the runner-up spot in the standings - maintains that the season overall has been more positive than negative.

"My first season in Yamaha, I felt quite OK, we started better than we expected," Vinales recalled. "Then we had some up and downs, and this confused us a lot with the chassis set-up and many things.

"It was important to do these mistakes [this year] so we don't do them next year."

No doubt, Vinales has the potential to win titles in MotoGP. He proved as much during a stellar 2016 season at Suzuki, a mightily impressive rookie Moto2 campaign in 2014 that earned him the call-up to the Hamamatsu marque, and his run to the Moto3 title against stiff opposition the year before that.

But the pressure on his shoulders, especially with an adversary as formidable as Rossi on the other side of the Yamaha pitbox, was enormous, both externally from his billing as pre-season favourite and from within himself, from his sheer belief in his own ability and his impatience to take the fight to the series' established stars.

"I had in my mind I could [win the title]," Vinales said when asked if he dreamt of the title early in the season. "I proved I could do it. If in my mind there is the chance to win, I will try every year."

It might be fair to say that 2017 was a year too soon for the Yamaha-Vinales partnership, chock full of potential though it is, to blossom.

But if Yamaha can address the issues that have held it back this season, and Vinales can avoid some of the pitfalls that have blighted his 2017 challenge, perhaps MotoGP fans will finally be treated to the Vinales vs Marquez season-long battle for supremacy we ought to have seen this year.