Analysis: Why electronics remain Suzuki's Achilles' heel

The Suzuki GSX-RR has proven to be an ideal bike for practice and qualifying sessions, but it has a nasty habit of making life hard for its riders when it matters the most: on Sunday during the races.

Last year, Barcelona was the scene of the Japanese's manufacturer's first major accomplishment since its comeback as Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales took an unlikely one-two in qualifying on a track well suited to a nimble bike, albeit one lacking in acceleration and top speed.

A year on, there was no such repeat - Vinales qualified sixth and finished fourth, while Espargaro was forced to retire with seven laps to go having started down in 13th.

As the Granollers-born rider explained, his bike failed early - he said on the fourth lap, although the data shows it was a couple of laps later - when his electronics control unit began to cut the power supply off unexpectedly.

"I started to notice that the control unit was cutting off and I tried everything, changing the mapping and so on," said Espargaro, who used the 'evolution' Suzuki chassis for the Catalunya race but later admitted this was a mistake.

"The power loss was huge, like more than 20 percent through the corners.

"I tried to keep going because I hate to have to retire, but I was lapping five seconds slower, the bike wasn't working, and there were 10 laps to go. So I had to stop."

Vinales' grip "nightmare"

For Vinales, who raced with the standard chassis after considering it "too risky" to use the new version so soon, the problem did not appear so early, and wasn't so serious.

But it did hurt him, especially in the second half of the race, when his pace began to drop dramatically in relation to the leaders.

With 10 laps remaining, Vinales was seven seconds away from the race lead and only four behind Dani Pedrosa in third. By the finish, he was some 24 seconds down on race winner Valentino Rossi and 18 adrift of Pedrosa.

While Espargaro's problem was probably caused by a programming issue, in Vinales' case it was down to a problem that appears to be endemic for the GSX-RR: its struggles with the lack of grip.

On Saturday morning, which was around 10 degrees cooler than in the afternoon, Vinales set the best time in the first session of the day. In the afternoon, however, the temperatures rose as the grip decreased, and in those conditions Vinales could do nothing but survive.

The leap forward Honda and Yamaha made from FP3 to qualifying was not there for Suzuki, and that was reflected too the following day.

"When there's grip, I can do incredible things with the bike. But when it starts to go, it becomes a nightmare," said Vinales.

After testing out the 'evolution' Suzuki frame again on Monday, Vinales indicated he is likely to use the new chassis for the next race at Assen.

But whatever improvements it makes to its chassis, it seems the problems Suzuki has can only be properly solved once its engineers understand how to calibrate the control unit better, something that some teams are taking longer to do than others.