Viñales ends test day fifth fastest

Team Suzuki Ecstar rider Maverick Viñales put in a solid day of testing in the Czech Republic on Monday, after his teammate Aleix Espargaro headed home to recuperate from the hand injury he sustained last week in Austria. Viñales had finished Sunday’s race at the track in ninth place on soft tyres, as the harder option proved the best gamble on the day.

The onus was therefore on Viñales to further evaluate information on the GSX-RR and compare data with that collected during the weekend, with the former Moto3™ world champion also exploring some new electronics configurations.

Maverick Viñales: “Finally, we could only test some new options in set-up and electronics, we’re still working in the pursuit of traction and we found some new information that will be useful for Silverstone and for the rest of the season. The lap-time has been consistently positive, making our day positive.”

Viñales’ Czech GP result was disappointing after the Spaniard has made himself a consistent top 6 finisher in 2016, but the Suzuki rider was third fastest on the soft option tyre in a race that saw the compound gamble deal the cards.

Maverick Viñales: “Probably we took the wrong choice with the tyres. We started with the soft thinking that the track would have gone to dry much quicker to get a flag-to-flag, but finally this didn’t happen so the performance dropped a lot. Anyway, I’m happy because if you see the classification of those who had soft tyres, we are third, and furthermore we could make very good steps forward.”