Maverick Viñales ended up having a tougher weekend than expected ahead of lights out, with the limited track time after bad weather on Friday giving the field less time to work on tyre choice.
Going with the hard tyre and finding the start of the race more difficult, the 2013 Moto3 World Champion found it did get better and managed to fight to fourth – but is looking for more in Japan after Championship leader Marc Marquez won at Aragon and increased his lead.
“The hard tyre was working really badly for us, especially on the first laps, but then it was working quite well at the end.” commented the Spaniard
“Not so much in terms of grip, but it was improving lap by lap, but anyway it wasn‘t enough. Folger used the medium tyre and said he had no grip, so it was really difficult to understand which tyre we could use.”
“For other races it was quite clear, because we were able to do many laps on the tyres so we knew which way to go, but here it was very difficult.”
“I tried to use the same tyre as the opponents. Normally Valentino has a good feeling with the tyres and pushes on the hard option.” He added
“For the next races we will have to work even harder on the Friday. It‘s important to keep pushing and working and keep our motivation high.”
“We have to work even harder, though it‘s difficult, and we‘ll go to Japan to improve and we‘ll try to be stronger.” Concluded Vinales