Mugello saw Maverick Viñales take just his third front row start in the MotoGP™ World Championship, but an issue when shifting gears saw it go to waste. The Spaniard was immediately ruled out of the podium hunt, recovering to take sixth place. It wasn’t the weekend he had wanted and now he’s out for success at his home track.
The Gran Premi Monster Energy de Catalunya saw Viñales take four straight podium finishes in the small capacity classes from 2011 to 2014. It also saw him take his first MotoGP™ front row in 2015 when he lined upsecond, behind his Team Suzuki Ecstar teammate. Viñales proved in France he and the bike are capable of the podium and with such strong historic results he shouldn’t be ruled out of the top three. Helping Viñales’ quest for the podium further is the fact he arrives in Barcelona after two days of testing in Valencia. At the test Viñales and teammate Aleix Espargaro ran a new-spec chassis which will again be tested during the weekend.
Maverick Viñales: “The race in Mugello was not as good as I expected, and I am happy we’ll soon get to racing again to find more performance. Last week we had two very positive days in Valencia and I found a good feeling, as the Suzuki Factory sent us some developments that will hopefully help me with the bike set-up. We are improving day-by-day and race-by-race, this is very important, and I really hope to have a good weekend in Catalunya. It will be my home race, I was born in the region and grew-up there, so there will be many of my friends and also a lot of people from my Fan Club, which will be a further incentive for me.”