Maverick Vinales Tops Aragon GP Friday Free Practice Sessions

16-10-2020

Maverick Vinales Tops Aragon GP Friday Free Practice Sessions

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP's Maverick Viñales found good form on the Friday at the MotorLand Aragón. He finished the day in first place in the combined standings.

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP's Maverick Viñales enjoyed a very successful opening day of the Gran Premio Michelin de Aragón race weekend. His strong liking for the MotorLand Aragón track once again showed in the FP2 session. He was the only rider to drop under the 1‘48s-mark, earning himself first place in the FP2 and combined free practice standings.

Viñales already had topped the FP1 rankings in the morning, and he continued the positive momentum in the afternoon. He gradually upped his pace throughout the warmer FP2, preparing for a mini time attack at the end of the session. He proved that the base set-up of his Yamaha is working well for him when he clocked a 1‘47.771s on lap 12/15. The hot lap put him at the top of the Friday timesheets, with a 0.249s margin over his closest rival.

Maverick Viñales

"First of all, I want to say I‘m sorry for Vale that he can‘t be here. I wish him a quick recovery. Today was good. I'm quite happy because I think we did good lap times. Even if the track is not at its best, our lap times are pretty fast. The bike is working well from the first laps. We know this track is good for us, because it has a lot of flowing corners. We just needed to improve in a few corners and we did that today, which makes me very happy. Today it was also windy here, and usually the Yamaha is very stable even then. Our race pace is quite good. We still need some more time to understand the tyres, but I can do a 1'48s-rhythm, which is good. I hope tomorrow the temperatures will be a bit higher. Especially this morning the conditions were very tricky. It was so difficult to stay on the bike. We will use tomorrow's sessions to try to be more consistent. I want to try to improve my riding style, because it's still not perfect at the entire track, but I can make another step in FP3. Anyway, today we did a good job. Overall the feeling is very positive. Now we will focus on tomorrow."

Massimo Meregalli

Team Director

"Of course, this is a very strange weekend for our team. We had the bad news yesterday that Valentino is not able to join us here this weekend. It‘s a situation that none of us ever even wanted to imagine, and he is dearly missed by the whole team. We all wish for Vale to return to good health quickly, and we hope to have him back on track with us as soon as possible. But until then we have to focus on the task at hand. We came here feeling quite optimistic that we could be strong this weekend, and so far we are on the right track. Maverick loves this circuit, and his pace is very strong, although the conditions were really cold and windy today. The number of crashes shows that it‘s quite tricky out there when you start pushing, but Maverick still felt comfortable with the bike, so this is very promising. We will continue to work hard this evening, because we‘re aiming to obtain a front-row qualifying result tomorrow."