Maverick Viñales crashes out of Assen race

Maverick Viñales fought his way up from eleventh on the grid and was heading towards the leading group, but his efforts ended in a DNF after an unlucky fall.

It was a busy race for Viñales. Starting from eleventh on the grid he flew off the line and made his way through the first lap settling into tenth place. He took a couple of laps to get his tyres up to temperature at the cool Assen track, before he heated up his pace and started to carve through the bunched-up pack of riders.

The Spaniard put his head down and hit the front of the group fighting for fifth place with 16 laps left and was making strides, until a crash in the chicane prematurely ended his quest.

Today’s results see Rossi move up to third place in the championship standings with a 108-point total. He is now three points behind his teammate Viñales in second place. The sensational win sees Yamaha hold the lead in the constructor championship with a 22-point margin and Movistar Yamaha MotoGP remain the leaders in the team standings by 28 points as they move on to Germany for the next round at Sachsenring in one week’s time.

Maverick Viñales:

“I can‘t explain what happened, because I don‘t even know why I crashed. I passed there 2000 times, but today was the day. I was pushing myself over the limit, trying to bring the Yamaha to the top and I think that if I hadn‘t crashed I could have reached the riders in front, because our pace was very fast. We need to learn that in qualifying the minimum you have to do is sixth or fifth, so I know that the mistake was made yesterday, not today. I was feeling great on the bike today. I was trying to maintain the tyres on a good level and preparing an attack on the last ten laps. I was riding in a good way and really smoothly on the entire track and I felt much stronger than the other riders, I was trying my best. This crash is something we can‘t explain, we can only learn from it, especially concerning qualifying. I knew this morning it was going to be tricky and tried my best: it was everything or nothing and finally I got nothing. We have to go for it the next couple of races and we expect something different.”