Maverick Viñales and Aleix Espargaro on the pace as final round gets underway

Maverick Viñales and Aleix Espargaró put in a strong showing in the opening day of Free Practice at the Gran Prix de la Comunitat Valenciana in Spain putting their Team SUZUKI ECSTAR GSX-RRs into third and sixth positions.

In the ‘cold’ opening morning FP1, with track temperatures of just 12 Degrees, Viñales was sixth with a time of 1’31.926, with Espargaró a fraction behind in seventh (1’31.942). But as track temperatures rose to 27 Degrees in this afternoon’s FP2, both riders’ times improved; Viñales setting a 1’30.775 and Espargaró 1’31.186.

Both Spaniards spent the sessions, at the final MotoGP™ race of the season, testing a variety of settings, including different electronics configurations, and are looking forward to finishing 2016 on a positive note.

Maverick Viñales:
“Today I felt really good with the bike and third place is a good result for the first day. We are already lapping with a strong pace also this is a good feeling. We are proving that our performance is getting to the top, we consistently improve and we are consistently within the top riders. We still have some fine-tuning that can be applied. The Valencia circuit is very different from the Malaysian one where we were for the last race: Here the layout is a lot tighter and with tight corners, where the machine needs to be quick in turning and acceleration. We still need to find a better efficiency on this, as our machine prefers fast and smooth corners, but we have room for improvement, and we are also already within the fastest.”

Aleix Espargaró:
“I’m happy with this top-six position, it’s a good feeling and makes me confident. This morning we had some issues with the rear-grip, but finally we made some improvements to the set-up for the afternoon and I felt much more confident. We can still improve something on the front, the softer compound of the tyre can be better exploited, so we also have room for improvement. It’s a good feeling to be close to the top; also, I am confident that we can improve further tomorrow.”

Source: Suzuki