Maverick Viñales puts Suzuki on Misano front row, Aleix Espargaro lines up 9th

Maverick Viñales powered his Team SUZUKI ECSTAR GSX-RR onto the front row of the grid for tomorrow’s MotoGP™ at the World Misano Circuit Marco Simoncelli after a hot-lap in the closing stages; as team-mate Aleix Espargaró will start from row three.

Both Viñales and Espargaró qualified through to the all-important Q2 by finishing in third and eighth position respectively in FP3, but when it counted, Viñales found some extra-tenths to post his best lap of the weekend – a 1’32.839, with Espargaró also setting his fastest lap of 1’33.272, which could probably have been even better if he hadn’t incurred a small crash during his last ‘time attack’ attempt.

The day has been positive overall, with intense work undertaken on the set-up to improve the pace for the race; and especially to keep a consistent performance with the increasing temperatures at the Misano circuit in San Marino. The work proved to give positive results, as both riders could find a good feeling and also be fast.

Maverick Viñales:
“Today wasn’t easy at all because usually with hot temperatures we struggle, but the team made extraordinary work between FP3 and qualifying and also I made a step, and so I could make a very effective lap. It is very important because the front row will allow me to be immediately at the front and fight for a good race. We have been pretty consistent in our improvements and finally we got within the fastest, we developed many solutions for the set-up and my crew found a very good setting. Now we also have some more ideas to work on tomorrow to see if we can find that little more that I believe we are still missing in our potential, as this will allow me to improve the pace which is the most important thing for the race.”

Aleix Espargaró:
“Finally in FP4 we found a good set-up, my pace is very good and I felt really satisfied with that. In qualifying, unfortunately, I had some trouble in finding the good feeling with the front tyre and finally with the second set of tyres for the last time attack I lost the front and had a small crash. It was too late to get back to garage and make another attempt, but the third row is not a bad place to start and having this good pace I feel confident for a positive race.”

Source: Suzuki