Maverick Viñales was almost always in podium positions in the MotoGP Portuguese GP, but on the penultimate lap he was forced to retire due to problems with his Aprilia RS-GP. These problems had already started to manifest long before, despite the good competitiveness shown.
The Spaniard pointed out that this outcome is a warning to improve the reliability of the bike: ‘I think we have to stay positive. Of course, I won’t say it’s a disappointment, but I would say it can be a wake-up call, to try to improve reliability a little more somehow. I even encouraged all the Aprilia technicians to improve in that area. I think it’s important if you want to fight for victories every weekend‘.
Author of a good performance despite the abandonment, Viñales said: ‘I think it’s amazing how fast I can be with this bike when I have the right balance. Despite the problems I had from the sixth lap, from the fifth to the sixth gear sometimes didn’t engage, so I was hitting the RPM for a long time, so I was losing a lot of speed – I was losing a few tenths. But despite that I was able to do 1m38s and that was fantastic’.
Asked to explain what happened when the problems made him slow down and then crash, #12 commented: ‘Basically after the uphill on the main straight I tried to put the sixth [gear], but it didn’t engage, so the bike was in neutral and I hit the limiter. I just took my leg off for [Enea] Bastianini to understand that I had some problems, to go away. And then I really tried to put it in sixth gear, it didn’t engage, I went back to second, and when I touched the throttle it engaged immediately and then I had a highside. I went down to second, and then when I touched the throttle the second gear engaged and I crashed’.
