Productive Friday Sees Vinales in Second Place in Teruel GP Free Practice Standings

23-10-2020

Productive Friday Sees Vinales in Second Place in Teruel GP Free Practice Standings

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP's Maverick Viñales showed some serious Friday-form at the MotorLand Aragón track today. He finished the FP2 in second place and took the same position in the combined free practice standings.

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP's Maverick Viñales is a man with a plan at this weekend‘s Gran Premio de Teruel. He mostly focused on perfecting his YZR-M1‘s set-up again in FP2, but also displayed strong one-lap speed at the end of the 45-minute session. He was one of only two riders to dip under the 1‘48s-mark and earned second place in the combined FP rankings.

Having found some new set-up solutions in this morning‘s FP1, Viñales put in a good amount of laps this afternoon to confirm the positive findings on a tyre combination that he feels might be a solid option for Sunday‘s race. He followed up his first three race set-up dedicated runs with a time attack on his second bike in the final five minutes of FP2 to earn himself a place inside the top 10 of the combined free practice standings.

Top Gun was eager to see the one-lap potential of the YZR-M1 in preparation for tomorrow‘s qualifying. He confirmed the Yamaha‘s serious one-lap speed, clocking a 1‘47.957s on his 18th and final lap, to take second place, 0.175s from first.

Maverick Viñales

"I think today was quite good, because I noticed an improvement. Actually, the track seemed to have less grip today compared to last week. That makes setting good lap times more difficult, but we did a good job anyway. We also need to take into consideration that we tried many things on the bike today, so that also made it hard to concentrate on getting a good rhythm. But riding consistent 1’49s on medium tyres and with a full tank is positive. I only put in a time attack at the end of FP2, and it was good. When I did the time attack I was on my other bike, so it was difficult to do a good lap but, anyway, I’m happy. We have reasons to be positive, because we found good things for tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going to concentrate on the rhythm, keep the good lines, do a perfect lap in qualifying, and see if we can improve the race pace a little bit in general. I know I can be really fast at the start of the race with the soft front, but we saw last week that we need to push more in the second half, so that’s why I think the medium option will be better this Sunday."

Massimo Meregalli

Team Director

"We used today’s session mainly to work on perfecting last Sunday’s race setting, using the data we collected as well as Maverick’s post-race feedback. He felt a drop of the tyre after one third of the race distance. But apart from that, the area that he asked us to improve for this GP was the grip on the maximum lean angle. Both in FP1 and FP2 we continuously tried different solutions until he did a time attack at the end. The weather and track conditions today also allowed us to test the medium tyre option, which we couldn't try last time, and we collected important information for the final tyre choice for Sunday's race. In FP3 we will keep working on the direction we took today. If the rider is satisfied when the setting is finalised, we will also dedicate some time to working on race pace during FP4.

Of course, it remains a strange situation for our team to have only one rider this weekend. The good news is that Vale is feeling better. He doesn’t have Covid-19 symptoms anymore and hopes that his test results this Monday will be negative so he can join us again for the races in Valencia."