In recent interviews with autosport.com and motorsportsmagazine.com, Vinales has revealed that the size of his Yamaha M1 is too big for him, as he (165cm) isn’t the tallest of the riders on the grid compared to his teammate Valentino Rossi (180cm).

"From the get-go, I've asked Yamaha for a smaller bike because the one I've been riding up until now was too big for me", Vinales told Autosport.

After winning three of the five races on his debut season with the factory Yamaha and becoming contender for the championship, it was shocking enough for everyone that it took almost 6 months for him to win another race that season.

But the following season was much more of a disaster than improvement for the Spaniard as he scored one win (the one and only of the team).

By the looks of it, one thing is clear: that for last two years we haven’t seen the best of Vinales. His approach wasn’t persuasive enough to convince the team to make the much necessary changes. Therefore, his side of garage failed to extract maximum out of the M1. But this time he seems positive and thinks the team will make the needed changes, to bring bike to his riding style and help him conquer that top step of podium more often. As a reminder Vinales has 2 more year in current contract with the team, running till the end of 2020

"It is difficult to change the bike as a whole, but if we consider the engine, some details and some things of the aerodynamics, I think the difference can be very important."

"I remember that I fitted perfectly on the Suzuki and I could reach everywhere, while with the M1 I felt I had too much bike.”

Furthermore, in an interview with motorsportsmagazine.com, Vinales also revealed that he is looking for a psychiatrist as well, which he thinks will help him and focus and deal with the emotional stress after bad weekends.

‘’I find a good sports psychiatrist I’m going to improve so much, because last season when I did badly in races it was partly because I was down’’.

As like in other sports lack of concentration and focus are very costly and turn one good session into a bad following one.

‘’Like in Qatar I was the fastest guy on the track in the second part of the race and I recovered four seconds on the leaders. But I was so emotionally down, because in 2017 I’d been on pole and I won the race… If I was more motivated, more looking forward to the next day, maybe I would’ve been second in the championship’’, he added.

As a reminder, if acted upon, for Vinales these changes wouldn’t be the only one going into the new season, as he changed his bike number, from 25 to 12, right after the end of last season and his crew chief mid-2018.

During the interview he also shed light on criticism he faced due for the change of his crew chief , as it was out of the blue and the decision was announced surprisingly, which wasn’t much accepted by the departing chief Ramon Forcada.

"Yamaha communicated it to me a few days ago, but from the rider there has not been a single word," Forcada said in an interview with TV channel Movistar.

But now Vinales has explained that decision, as pictured, wasn’t only made by him, whole Yamaha management took the decision together and he wasn’t the villain after all.

 "When it became known that Ramon Forcada wasn't going to work with me anymore, things didn't go well," he reflected.

"It was assumed that the decision was mine, but I cannot unilaterally decide that. It was a decision taken with Yamaha. The tension we experienced was unnecessary.’’

_{Sources: autosports.com , motorsportmagazine.com}