Aleix Espargaro 10th, Maverick Viñales 14th in complicated Misano race

After two days under intense sun and a dry warm-up, the GP of San Marino was afflicted by uncertain weather conditins with rain arriving right at the beginning of today’s MotoGP race to further mix up the results.

Although the race was declared dry, the increasing rain gave riders the first chance this year to take benefit of the bike-switch rule, where another machine is ready in the pit-lane with a rain set-up. The rain soon stopped, with the racing line getting drier lap-after-lap, forcing the riders to switch again for dry-set machines.

This led to an exciting an emotional ‘topsy-turvy’ race for the huge amount of spectators at the Misano Circuit, but it proved to be not so sweet for Team SUZUKI ECSTAR riders, who struggled to find good feelings with their machines in the conditions.

Both Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Viñales were pretty solid and consistent, even though they could never fight for positions better than 10th overall, with Espargaro 10th and Viñales in 14th position overall.

Aleix Espargaro:
“I must say I am disappointed about the race, not only for the result itself but because we don’t deserve to be where we are. We are all working very hard and the classification and points are not where we should be. In the first part of the race in dry conditions I was feeling competitive, being able to fight for the positions ahead well into the top-ten, then when we had to switch the bikes for the second time and we didn’t manage the situation at its best; maybe I could have stopped a lap earlier and gained some more positions. Unfortunately we still lack in performance, no need to say once more that we miss some acceleration, but we need to find a more efficient way to exploit what positives we have. Now we head to Aragon, I hope we will have a better luck there but most of all I hope that the weather will be similar to what we found in testing so that we can start from a solid base, which is what we couldn’t do in this race.”

Maverick Viñales:
“Once again this weekend I must admit that I am disappointed, after the tests we were so positive about this race but at the end of the day we couldn’t exploit anything about the information we got from it. I have struggled since the very first session, I couldn’t find a proper feeling with the setting and I can’t understand why. For sure the conditions were much different from the tests but back then I felt very confident, so it is so strange to have such extremely different feelings. The weather mixed up things for sure, but we could have done better. Now we need to find some ideas and solutions, we still have many races and I’m sure we can improve further, everything helps to grow and learn, so I want to keep in a positive mood.”

Source: Suzuki Racing