Fourth place on Motegi grid for Maverick Viñales

The winner of the last GP, Maverick Viñales, achieved the fourth best time in the qualifying session, which was held at the Motegi circuit today.

The reigning Moto3 world champion in the category was not completely satisfied with the result achieved because he felt capable of fighting for pole position like in Aragon a fortnight ago. Nevertheless, Maverick displays a fast pace and faces tomorrow’s race with victory as his goal.

His teammate in the Páginas Amarillas HP 40 team, Luis Salom, struggled to get the right feeling with the changes made on the bike for the afternoon session.

The aim of the Mallorcan for tomorrow’s race is to have a good start, make up positions in the early laps and secure a finish in the points.

Maverick Viñales – 4th place – 1.51.222
I think we’re prepared to fight for victory in tomorrow’s race. We have to continue working on track because I think I can still go faster and for this we will use warm up tomorrow. We have a good pace and we can have a good race.

Luis Salom – 25th place – 1.52.453
The weekend went pretty well but qualifying was a disaster. We wanted to try a few things on the bike and they’ve not worked well, I have even run off track. When I stopped in the box, there were just ten minutes remaining and I panicked a bit because I was so far behind. I decided to wait for someone to set a good time to see if I could tag on but it has not helped me at all. This weekend we’ve been riding a lot and the pace was not bad, and therefore I hope we can finish in the top 15 and bring home some points.

Source: Pons Racing