After winning the Sprint race, Maverick Viñales was the main pursuer of Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati) for almost the entire main race of the Portuguese MotoGP Grand Prix. Despite dealing with gearbox issues early on, the Aprilia rider never stopped believing in the possibility of winning.
The Spaniard spoke to the press about how he dealt with the failure: ‘I was just praying to go in, because I pressed like five times and then go in. It’s like this, sometimes it can happen and it happened here. I prefer that it happens when you are in the front. Imagine that I was tenth and it happened, I would be very disappointed. But now I just say I’m really motivated and I saw myself winning another race. Despite the problem, I think maybe I could have the chance to fight for it. It’s nice. I finish this weekend with a victory, so I’m happy’.
Viñales emphasized that he always believed in the victory despite the setbacks caused by the gearbox: ‘All the race I thought I could fight for the victory. The problem is just that everytime the gearbox was going worse and worse, so I was always losing more on the main straight. I think I was losing 0.2s on the main straight and then I recovered all the gap again. Honestly, with all this problem I was doing 1m38.8s and it was unbeliavable, because it could be 1m38.6s. I’m really happy’.