Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Face Fierce Competition on Emilia Romagna GP Friday

18-09-2020

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Face Fierce Competition on Emilia Romagna GP Friday

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP's Maverick Viñales and Valentino Rossi continued their race package tweaking programme in this afternoon‘s FP2 session. They secured 4th and 15th position respectively in the very close combined free practice results, with less than 0.8s covering the top-18 riders.

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP's Maverick Viñales and Valentino Rossi worked on tyre degradation and race pace in this afternoon‘s Gran Premio dell‘Emilia Romagna e della Riviera di Rimini FP2 session. With less than 0.8s covering the top-18 riders, the Factory Yamaha duo ended the day in 4th and 15th place respectively in the combined free practice timesheets.

Viñales stuck with the strategy he had in the morning and mainly worked on preparing for Sunday‘s race this afternoon. Only this time, he too switched to a soft rear tyre in the final stages of the session to put in a hot lap. He clocked a 1‘31.669s on lap 20/20, earning himself 4th place in the FP2 and the combined FP rankings, 0.041s off the fastest time.

Rossi started his second outing briefly topping the provisional rankings, before switching his focus to his main target. He used the session to check if the setting tweaks he made in the morning would benefit him also in the hotter afternoon conditions. The Doctor also had some time to put in a time attack at the end. He set a 1'32.263s fastest time on lap 19/21, securing 12th place in the afternoon results. The effort put him in 15th position in the combined free practice timesheets, 0.635s from the top.

Maverick Viñales

"The feeling for one lap is good, but the only problem is that everything that we tested on Tuesday doesn't work during the race weekend, because the feeling and the grip level changed. We need to set-up for these conditions in preparation for the race, and we need to try to understand how we can be faster. So, we went back to our standard bike that we finished with last Sunday. We lost a bit of time because of all of this. We have to continue working to find out how to have more grip during the race."

Valentino Rossi

"It was a difficult first day. We tried something different on the bike. In the morning I didn't do a lap on new tyres, I did it this afternoon. Unfortunately, I'm out of the top 10, though I improved on my Friday lap time from last week, because everybody is a lot stronger and faster, like we expected. So, we have to work to raise our level. We have to try something else to improve our pace. We will work on the bike. We haven't found the right balance yet, but we will continue to work and try again tomorrow morning."

Massimo Meregalli

Team Director

"Today we revisited the items of last Tuesday's testing programme. The weather conditions for this weekend are expected to be slightly cooler than what we‘ve had previously during the San Marino GP and the Misano Test. Also the track conditions are different from the test, with more rubber on track, so we wanted to use today‘s sessions to see how this affects matters, especially concerning the grip levels. Maverick continues to have a good feeling with the bike for one lap, but he is still working on improving his race pace. He tried using some things he found during the test, but because the track conditions are so different from Tuesday, he went back to the package he used last weekend. Still, he finished only 0.041s from the top of today‘s timesheets. Valentino isn‘t that far off the fastest time either, but the entire rider field is very close. He is now in 15th place in the combined rankings. We expect tomorrow to be intense. If today‘s times are anything to go by, the battle for the top 10 in FP3 will be hard-fought, and also the times in qualifying will be very fast. The team will work hard tonight to prepare another step for FP3 to let Maverick and Valentino face the competition in the best shape possible."