Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales says MotoGP Emilia Romagna Grand Prix has given him the correct pace to compete for the podium.
Vinales, being the nine-time MotoGP race winner scored his best result in last weekend’s Misano race. Vinales made a great jump from 19th to 8th where he barely got beaten by his teammate Aleix Espargaro.
However, Vinales commented that he believes: he could have cracked his way to the top three winners on the RS-GP. But he ended up losing at least ten to fifteen seconds while picking his way up through the traffic on the opening laps of the Misano race.
He comments, ‘‘it’s pretty tough because I need to learn many things in just a few laps.” Vinales also points to the fact that he had trouble adapting from Yamaha to Aprilia in such a short period.
Vinales believes his first few laps were compromised because he had never tried the new set-up of Aprilia before. Adjusting to such things during the race can be quite challenging.
Vinales admits his potential was very high during this race. However, he feels like he lost too much time during the first few laps.
He says that his progression is going to be step by step. He is happy that he has started improving and is headed somewhere.
Like most races, Misano too has a lot of laps that allow the racers to pick up their game in the latter half. Vinales feels a lot more confident after this particular race. He is confident because he knows at his heart that if he started the right way, he could have easily made it to the top three or four. With this knowledge, I think we can expect him to do well in the next races.
In an interview, when Motorsport company asked about their new set-up, Vinales commented on the balance of the bike. He mentioned that he has been trying to “find himself” on the bike. He further adds that at times he feels comfortable but at other times, he does get uncomfortable on this bike. Besides, due to the changing conditions, his performance got affected in the last weekend’s race.
The biker further commented that they had to work on the balance and weight of the bike as well. After that, it felt much for comfortable. Now, he might consider changing the braking of the bikes since it is very different than other bikes Vinales has ridden before.