When Maverick Viñales (Team Suzuki Ecstar) took his fist premier class podium in Le Mans, everyone thought the floodgates would open and he’d be a regular top three contender. But it’s never easy in the MotoGP™ World Championship and since France he’s only had one top five race finish. That could all change at the GoPro Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland, the Spaniard beginning the weekend on top. Conditions were less than ideal and it wasn’t until the end of FP2 that riders really began to push hard. A 1’22.161 put him top of the timesheets on Friday.
It wasn’t a flawless day however, Viñales one of five premier class riders to fall at Turn 11, the first right after seven left hand corners. The cool conditions of Friday only made the corner more challenging and everyone is hoping for a Saturday kissed by the sun.
Maverick Viñales: “Honestly I can’t explain the crash; I just lost the front without any evidence of the cause. Corner 11 here is always very tricky, I need to check the data to verify if maybe I was a little wider than normal, or there was something else different from the previous lap; but it may also be a matter of temperature: In corner 1 and 3 - the other right-handers - I was ok, but then corner 11 is very far away and it’s very hard to keep the right-shoulder of the tyre at the proper temperature. Anyway, the start has been good, the position is positive; but we still have some work to do. This track is very tight so we started from a set-up that guaranteed good agility, but now we have to find a good balance having a little more stability in some parts. It’s not gonna be easy because as always, when you improve in one direction, you lose something in the other.”