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Maverick Vinales says Yamaha has made a big improvement on the weaknesses it carried into the start of the 2018 MotoGP season.

Yamaha came into the campaign with Vinales' team-mate Valentino Rossi urging it to invest more effort into finding a fix for the problems, and the team took its best result of the season so far at Austin last weekend with second and fourth.

"We did a big improvement on the electronics," Vinales said. "We start to understand how to go fast on the 2018 Yamaha bike.

"The way we work is a little different, being more aggressive and risking a little more.

"The team has recovered well since the first race, we have improved the weak points of the bike that we had in Qatar and Argentina and that is very important.

"We know we improve quite a good thing from Argentina, and we have a way to go to improve even more."

Vinales added that taking second at Austin was a "great relief for the team" after a slow start to the season, and he believes a first victory in almost a year is not too far away.

"We knew that Austin was a difficult circuit for our bike, and we saved it," he said.

"We had a good race and we have to be happy, we were not far from [winner Marc] Marquez.

"Everything is changing, our way of approaching the weekend also. I can smell the victory.

"Now we have to improve another little step in Jerez. It seems the grip is good there and when it's like that our bike flies.

"I think it's a track that fits quite well for our bike and we're going to try our best."