Maverick Viñales secured the fourth position in Friday afternoon’s practice session at the French MotoGP. Despite not having the best sensations, he was fast and competitive, ending the day very encouraged.
The Aprilia rider stated: ‘It was a really good start of the weekend, a lot of data to learn and to understand, to improve the bike. The feeling hasn’t been fantastic with the front, but the lap time is super fast, so it’s a good sign. It means that we are going to improve for tomorrow and also for Sunday. So that’s a positive start for sure’.
For Saturday, Viñales is confident of reaching the top three in qualifying, setting sixth place as the minimum goal: ‘I have to hit a perfect lap, so we put all my attention to one lap and we’ll try to put the bike inside the first row, or the second row – this is very important, maximum the second row. But we aim to be in the first three places. We have some ideas to improve for tomorrow because obviously we can improve’.
Asked if there is any part of the track where he struggles more, the Spaniard clarified that the only problem is performance under braking: ‘I don’t have any specific part. What I feel is that today I had a lot of front lock on brakes, so I couldn’t be precise. So basically I couldn’t take the maximum from what I had, but it’s a P4 at 0.2s without taking out the maximum. That’s fantastic, that’s good news! Also in terms of pace I was one of the fastest, so I think for tomorrow everything is going to be better and I’m going to try to be at the maximum to try to fight for the Sprint’.