Disappointing end to Catalan GP for Maverick Vinales
The Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP team were unlucky to see Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales retire out of a promising fifth and third place respectively at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya due to a multiple rider collision. The team-mates were uninjured, but the incident ended their Catalunya challenge with a double NC result.
Following yesterday‘s Race Direction penalty, Viñales had to start from P6. He had already mentioned he would use the setback as extra motivation, and he did exactly that. The home hero had a brilliant launch, arriving at the first corner in sixth place but cunningly moved up to fourth as he flicked his bike left and right in Turn 2 and 3.
Today’s unlucky double NC result means Rossi stays in fifth position in the championship standings with a 68-point gap to first, whereas Viñales moves down from eighth to eleventh in the rankings, with a 100-point margin to the top. Yamaha is now third in the constructor standings, gaining a place, whilst Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP drops one position to fourth in the team classification.
The team will be back at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya tomorrow for a one-day IRTA test, preparing for the Motul TT Assen round that will be held in the Netherlands in two weeks‘ time.
Maverick Vinales:“Actually, I saw someone coming very fast on the inside, and I tried to pick up the bike to avoid a crash. Dovi was in front of me and I thought that just they were going to crash, but unfortunately they touched my rear tyre and I jumped. I couldn’t avoid it and I’m really disappointed, but on the other hand I’m really happy. We’ve made a good start and did some good first laps. We had prepared the bike really well with the full fuel tank, so the method we’ve tried this weekend is not so bad, it’s working. We’re going to try to reproduce our work in Assen and see if we get the same result, because we saw on the first lap that I was able to get to the front and push, and that was the most important for me. Who knows what would have happened if I could have followed Marc? But the bike was working well and the team was doing an excellent job this weekend, so we need to keep working like this.”
