Loris Capirossi is baffled by his Suzuki team's poor form after classifying in a distant 11th place at today's Sachsenring race.
The Italian veteran, who finished almost one minute behind compatriot Valentino Rossi's race-winning Yamaha, complained about tire issues but feels there are other reasons he can't quite pinpoint for the slump.
"We had a couple of issues during the warm-up today," said Capirossi, "and when we saw that the weather was likely to be a bit better this afternoon we decided to use a harder-compound tire.
"Unfortunately we never had a chance to test this tire during practice and it was difficult to get the rubber up to temperature. This was one of the reasons that I struggled during the race, but there was also something else that wasn't quite right and we need to understand why we did so badly here."
Except for exceptions at a few venues, MotoGP has banned post-race Monday testing in an effort to cut costs. Capirossi reckons such a session would be very handy for his outfit at the moment.
"This weekend has now finished and we could do with doing some work on this track to see where we are going wrong, but that is not possible," he explained. "This is not good enough for us and we don't want to be performing like this and we need as much help as we can get to improve things."
The 36-year-old had a crash in the final seconds of qualifying that left his left ankle in pain.
He added: "The whole crew did a great job last night to rebuild the bike after I destroyed it yesterday, and my condition from that crash is not great but the biggest problem I had today was lack of feeling. I wasn't able to turn as well as I wanted and this is a problem for me. I really hope that we can find some solutions and analyse the data from today and try and do our best at Donington next week."
Capirossi's teammate Chris Vermeulen had an even more difficult weekend, after a heavy crash on Friday caused him hip and shoulder injuries. The Australian managed to salvage a 13th place at the end thanks to a last-lap pass over Pramac Ducati rival Mika Kallio.
Team manager Paul Denning echoed Capirossi's sentiments: "It is very difficult to draw any positives from the race result or for that matter the whole weekend here at Sachsenring.
"The riders are both very much walking wounded so it is good that they were able to finish the race today with no further damage -- to either themselves or the bikes -- and manage to get some points as well.
"We hope that they will be in a much better condition to put on an improved show at the team's second 'home Grand Prix' next weekend."