Brivio accepts Yamaha lack power

Valentino Rossi had to settle for second behind Casey Stoner at Losail after repeatedly seeing the Australian's Ducati blast past his Yamaha on the straights. The Italian also appeared to lack straightline speed relative to Dani Pedrosa's Honda in the opening laps.

"There's no denying it: we have some homework to do, because on the straight it's clear our engine goes slower than the Ducati's so this was the main problem," Brivio told television channel Italia 1.

But straightline performance aside, Brivio said that he was very pleased with Yamaha's pace in Qatar.

"We are nevertheless competitive: we can fight for victories, and this is only the first of 18 races, so we'll try to improve the engine, while also going down this path, because the package is very competitive, and the bike was good to ride," he said.

"In terms of frame and tyres we couldn't do anymore than we did today. We leave Qatar with 20 points and with a bunch of notes over which we'll have to work.

"We don't want to put our reliability at risk, but we'll certainly try to look for more horsepower. In Japan we are already working on the engine and on developments. We'll try to bring them forward a bit."

The teams' fuel allowance has been reduced for 2007, and Brivio suspects that Yamaha might have been too conservative in its response to this regulation change.

"The new 21-litre regulation brings us all to try to find the best compromise between power and fuel consumption," he said. "Maybe it's about optimising the electronics and take a few risks more to improve the power."