Team Suzuki Ecstar celebrated their second successive rostrum of the flyaway races after Maverick Vinales charged through the pack to take third, the Spaniard’s fourth podium of the season.
The Spaniard suffered a woeful qualifying session yesterday. Vinales mistimed his final run in QP1 and was stuck in 13th for today’s 27-lap Australian Grand Prix. Feeling that he could challenge for the win prior to the weekend, Vinales welcomed the dry weather and found a strong set-up in warm up for the race.
Opting for the hard front tyre, Vinales was cautious in the opening laps as to not push the front too hard whilst it was still coming up to temperature. After three or so laps, the grip started to come to him and he was able to begin his assault on the riders ahead.
Only six laps into the race, Vinales had already found his way up to seventh, which became sixth when Marc Marquez crashed out. However, the Spaniard spent too long trying to clear Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso and his Suzuki teammate Aleix Espargaro, and he reckons this cost him second place in the end.
After a hard battle with Dovizioso and Espargaro, Vinales took second in the closing stages and was able to get the gap down to Valentino Rossi ahead to just over 1.5 seconds. But it was too little, too late and the Spaniard had to settle for the last step of the podium.
Despite missing out on second, Vinales is still thrilled with the result especially after the tough weekend he has endured. This third place is also a big result for Suzuki as it means they will lose their technical concessions for amassing six podium credits this year, courtesy of three thirds and a win. This will put the Hamamatsu factory on the same set of rules regarding engine development and allocation, as well as in-season testing as Yamaha, Ducati and Honda next season.
“This podium has a very good taste to it, the weekend had been very hard this morning, but finally I was happy when I woke up today and saw the sun. We had very little time to finalise a set-up for the race, but finally the machine was very good to me and the tyre choice proved to be the right one, allowing me to recover and go for the third,” Vinales stated.
“I only had to be careful in the very early stages of the race because not having had the time to test the tyres I was not totally sure the front would support me, but after two or three laps I realised I could trust it. My pace was very good, I’m sorry for Aleix’s crash because we were having a strong race and we had a good pace. At the end, I also thought I could catch-up for second place, my pace was good enough to do it, but unfortunately I’d lost too much time in getting from sixth to third and the race was gone. Anyway, I’m really happy with the result, I want to thank my team because they did a very good job having such a short time to prepare.”
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