It is impossible to take Maverick Viñales out of the equation when it comes to the title fight this season in MotoGP, and for the Aprilia Racing rider to be fifth in Le Mans was… a ‘bad day’. Still, he is happy with his performance, especially when compared to his own potential on tracks like Le Mans, with Jerez.
The Spaniard talked about his performance over the weekend, recalling the last GP of Spain: ‘I think it was a good weekend based on the results. We took much more from Jerez and in Jerez we had much more potential than in Le Mans. Let’s see, of course. Here I had high expectations to fight at the front, I tried’.
The tire performance hurt him a lot and from there he couldn’t do what he would have liked: ‘In the middle of the race it seemed like I was stuck behind Marc [Márquez], that we were going to move forward, but then my rear tire wore out a lot. I managed to get to the garage and that was it. I couldn’t do much more’.
He continued to say that overall it wasn’t that bad, knowing in advance that he could have more problems: ‘Let’s see, yesterday [Saturday] I didn’t have the same problem throughout the weekend, braking at turn 8 and then you don’t accelerate well, you lose a tenth, the tire heats up because you try to recover it by accelerating. It’s a consequence, especially in braking. In braking we are not in the right place, as we could have been in other races. Then, we have to analyze the data and improve. Let’s see, the guys already told me that this circuit was going to be difficult, we don’t know by the balance, it’s one of the worst, but we didn’t do so badly either’.
The final position, he considers, was good overall: ‘We know that a bad day has to be the fifth. It was a bad day, we are in fifth. It must be like this. Of course I would have liked to fight at the front, because I think it would have been a great battle between four, but I tried. In the end, [Enea] Bastianini came like a plane and I couldn’t do anything. No more delays, right? Trying not to let it happen, but we’ve already passed it and that was taken in an instant’.
