It is impossible to put Maverick Viñales out of title contention this season in MotoGP and for the Aprilia Racing rider being fifth at Le Mans was… a ‘bad day’. Still he is happy overall with his performance, even more when comparing to his own potential on tracks like that of Le Mans, with Jerez.
The spaniard address his weekend performance, recalling the last GP of Spain: ‘I think it has been a good weekend based on the results. We have gotten a lot more out of Jerez and in Jerez we had much more potential than in Le Mans. Let’s see, of course I do. Here I had a lot of expectations of fighting up front, I have tried’.
His tyre performance hurted him bad, and from there on he couldn’t do as he would have liked: ‘Halfway through the race it seemed like I was hooked on Marc [Márquez], that we were going forward, but then my rear tyre dropped a lot. I was able to get to the box [of the team, in the end] and that was it. I haven’t been able to do much else’.
He continued to say it wasn’t that bad overall, knowing beforehand he could have more issues: ‘Let’s see, yesterday [saturday] I didn’t have the same problem all weekend, the braking of the 8 and then you no longer accelerate well, you lose a tenth, you heat up the tyre because it tries to recover it by accelerating. It is a consequence, especially when braking. When braking we are not in place at all, as we could have been in the other races. Then, analyze the data and grow. Let’s see, the boys already told me this circuit will be difficult, we don’t know from the balance, it is one of the worst, but we haven’t done so bad either’.
The final position, he considers, was good overall: ‘We know that a bad day has to be fifth. It’s been a bad day, we’re fifth. Must be like this. It is clear that I would have liked to fight there up front, because I think it would have been a nice battle between four, but I tried. In the end, [Enea] Bastianini came like a plane and I couldn’t do anything. Without further ado, right? Trying not to let it happen, but we have passed and it was taken away in a moment’.