It was an issue that the BoB period Spits had, but should be fixed/mitigated by the 1941 time frame.
The reason to do the negative G manuvers instead of roll is because Spitfires have roll issues at high speeds, especially the early models with fabric ailerons. Metal aileron skins, and clipped wings help it tremendously, but it was never a great high speed roller. Even with high roll planes, like the 190, with is somethign like 180 degrees/ second roll rate, if someone has just dropped away from you at 200kph, and you take a second to roll over to chase them, you've just given them 60m of distance. That's not trivial.
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