Viñales and Rossi work on race pace in Styria GP Friday sessions

The Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP Team continued their search for the optimal setting for their YZR-M1s this afternoon, ahead of Sunday‘s Grand Prix of Styria. Maverick Viñales and Valentino Rossi ended a full-on Friday in 8th and 13th place respectively in the combined rankings.

After a productive FP1 session, Viñales was looking forward to trying some further setting tweaks to shave off a couple more tenths of a second per lap at the challenging Spielberg track in the afternoon. He worked diligently on getting his bike race-ready until the final stages of the session, when he went all out to earn himself a provisional place in Q2. Riding with a soft rear tyre, he produced a 1‘24.060s on his very last lap, taking fifth in FP2, 0.422s from the top. His best time earned him eighth position in the combined free practice results.

Rossi spent the majority of the afternoon session on improving his pace, though the track conditions were significantly warmer than they were this morning. He was in 10th position in the final seven minutes when he had a soft rear tyre fitted on his Yamaha, but the competition was fierce. He dropped a 1‘24.433s for 11th place in FP2 and crossed the line with 2 seconds left on the clock. He made his last lap count, setting four personal-best sectors for a 1‘24.378s and ninth place, 0.740s from the top. However, as some riders had clocked a faster morning time, The Doctor is 13th in the combined free practice timesheets.

Maverick Viñales:

We tried to work a lot on the race set-up today, because last time we suffered a lot during the race compared to the practice sessions. Last Sunday, I didn’t really have a good feeling, especially in the beginning of Race 2, so today we were trying to find ways to be better and focus less on our position in the practice. We found some positive things. We’re not completely where we want to be yet, but little by little we are moving forward, and this is the most important. For tomorrow, we will concentrate on securing a pass into Q2, and then in FP4 we will work again in preparation for the race. Here it’s very important to start from the front row. Last week I secured pole position, and this was very good for the race, so that’s what we need to do again – being on the front row is our main objective for tomorrow.

Valentino Rossi:

The bigger problem today was that we tried to do the time attack in the afternoon, but the asphalt was more than 50 degrees, and it was difficult to improve on the lap time from this morning. We did only one time attack in FP2, because we are always at the limit with the tyre quantity, like everyone else. We hope that tomorrow in FP3 we will have a dry session. Usually the morning is a bit colder, so you can go faster. So, tomorrow morning it will be crucial to try to stay inside the top 10. We will try! About my pace, we’re not so bad, but as always there are many riders who are very strong. Today we worked on improving compared to last week, but we weren’t able to find something that gave us a better pace.