Source: MotoGP.

A technical problem was the cause of Australian Broc Parkes’ exit from yesterday’s Circuit of the Americas round of the MotoGP World Championship, in his second appearance for Paul Bird Motorsports.

After qualifying 21st within half a second of impressive teammate Michael Laverty, a DNF on debut in Austin was a disappointing result for Parkes following his point-scoring finish at Qatar’s season opener.

“I hate retiring from races, when you’ve raced in 24-hour races it’s always hard to retire after eight laps,” Parkes told Crash.net. “I had a lot of chatter in the front from the start of the race and for some reason the bike felt really slow in first, second and third gear.

“I don’t know if something was going on with the electronics but after that the chatter got so bad that I had to come in. It’s unfortunate because in warm-up I had done some laps on used tyres and it had felt good so I don’t know if it was a tyre problem or what that caused the problem.

“I haven’t spoken to Bridgestone yet about it. There was definitely something wrong with my bike as well though. It was really slow and misfiring so the boys are going to look at that.”

Heading to Argentina on 25-7 April in the series’ debut at Autódromo Termas de Río Hondo, Parkes will enter the weekend on a level playing field with the grand prix paddock.

“The good thing about Argentina is that very few guys have been there so that’s a bit more of a level playing field,” he added. “Normally I learn tracks pretty quickly so it should be good.”

Laverty meanwhile went on to finish 16th, marginally missing out on his first points of the 2014 season.