Following a seriously impressive pre-season campaign, expectations were high for Aprilia Racing heading into the start of the season. Aleix Espargaro has started the year brightly with solid results in both Qatar and Indonesia to leave him seventh in the standings. Teammate Maverick Viñales, though, is yet to deliver.
However, despite failing to score a point in Mandalika, the former Yamaha man described Sunday as his "best day since arriving at Aprilia". A breakthrough with his set-up during Warm Up saw him finish second behind Fabio Quartararo on tyres that were twelve laps old. Significant changes to Viñales' RS-GP meant he was finally able to showcase his talents with the Italian brand.
"Even though the result is certainly not the one we wanted, it was a positive weekend," said Viñales. "Today was perhaps the most important day of growth for me since joining Aprilia because we found a really good setting that I was able to go fast with in the warm-up session and that I was comfortable with even in wet conditions.
"It was a survival race at the beginning, you couldn't see the bike in front, so it was very hard. I lost 15 seconds in four laps, so it was pretty tough. But at the end of the race, I had a good rhythm, good lap times. I'm happy with the work we did here. We are taking a step closer to the best with every round. We feel that if we qualify in the front, we can be in the front. I can’t wait to get to Argentina to continue this positive trend."
The Spaniard complained of his age-old problem in Qatar: rear grip. His feeling had completely changed compared to the Official Tests, meaning he could only manage 12th in the opening round whilst teammate Espargaro challenged for the podium. But it appears the Noale factory have found a setting to move forward with and we could see the Viñales of old from Argentina onwards.