Maverick Viñales was the fourth fastest in the Friday afternoon practice session at the French MotoGP Grand Prix. Despite not having the best feelings, he was fast and competitive, ending the day feeling very encouraged.
The Aprilia rider stated: ‘It was a really good start to the weekend, lots of data to learn and understand, to improve the bike. The feeling with the front wasn’t fantastic, but the lap time is quite fast, so it’s a good sign. This means we will improve for tomorrow and also for Sunday. So, it’s definitely a positive start‘.
For Saturday, Viñales is confident in aiming for a top three in qualifying, with sixth place as the minimum goal: ‘I have to do a perfect lap, so I will focus all my attention on one lap, and we will try to put the bike on the first row or the second row – this is very important, at least the second row. But we aim to be in the top three. We have some ideas to improve for tomorrow because it’s obvious that we can improve‘.
When asked if there is any part of the track where he struggles the most, the Spanish rider clarified that the only issue is braking performance: ‘I don’t have a specific area. What I feel is that today I had a lot of front-end locking in braking, so I couldn’t be precise. Therefore, basically I couldn’t extract the maximum from what I had, but it’s a fourth place at 0.2s without extracting the maximum. That’s fantastic, it’s good news! Also in terms of pace, I was one of the fastest, so I think everything will be better for tomorrow and I will try to be at my best to try to fight for the Sprint‘.
