It was a disappointing result for young Maverick Vinales after his impressive performance during testing and practice in Qatar.
The Team Suzuki Ecstar rider has been so impressive since the beginning of the year as he has worked so hard to ‘evolve’ the GSX-RR. The team are competing in their second season since the return of the Suzuki to the MotoGP class and Vinales has already managed to develop the bike a lot in such a short space of time.
Vinales qualified an impressive third position on the grid just 0.096 seconds behind pole position Jorge Lorenzo, who went on to win the race on his Movistar Yamaha. Vinales did not get the best of starts though and the Spanish rider found himself entering turn one in seventh behind Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa. Despite his success so far in the season, he found himself unable to catch Pedrosa who was chasing the front pack of five riders that had seemed to break away early on.
“Finally, a sixth place is not a bad result but it is not enough at this point. The whole weekend I had a very good feeling and my race-pace was around 1:55 (Minutes), while in the race I couldn’t make the same. Honestly, I’m not sure why. In the race, I couldn’t find a proper feeling and I felt the bike sliding a lot, so we definitely need to see the data and understand what changed and happened. The positive thing is that for the whole weekend we have been very close to the top; maybe in the race we were a little unlucky because the weekend overall was very positive.
“I can’t wait to go to Argentina and work again on my GSX-RR, we have a lot of potential. If we manage to find better grip and finalise the set-up of the full seamless, for sure we will fight for the top positions. I must thank the Factory and the Team, they are doing a huge job to support me and I am sure that if we keep working hard we will find the best solution.”
Vinales looked disappointed at the end of the 22 lap race under the floodlights. After all his efforts and success leading up to the race, the Spaniard deserved to place higher. Hopefully, we will see more of what he and the Suzuki Ecstar Team have to offer in the near future.
