Slider McCoy in grip trouble.

Red Bull Yamaha rider Garry McCoy is struggling to cope with the amount of sideways action required of him this weekend, as his tyres finally give up the ghost.

The charismatic Australian, winner of round one of the GP500 series in South Africa, is well known for his rear wheel steer technique, but has admitted that the longer corners at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya are causing him more problems than most.

''Garry is having a problem with rear grip,'' team manager Peter Clifford confirmed to motograndprix.com, ''This circuit has some very long corners, and he steers it on the rear so much that they are causing problems. He gets [the bike] sideways halfway though the corner, and then it's going more and more sideways and he's having to get out of the throttle. Being three seconds off the pace is not just him, and we need to sort it out.''

Team-mate Regis Laconi, however, was far happier with his lot after the opening qualifying session for Sunday's Catalunya GP, having got his machine to the stage where it is more or less balanced for any circuit.

''I'm relatively happy with what we've achieved,'' reported the Frenchman's crew chief, Mal Pitman, ''The bike is in the ballpark for sure. We tried a lot of things today, and we're close to our race settings, Tomorrow's for fine tuning.''