Movistar Yamaha Search for Solution on Second Day in Spain

Qualifying

An incident-packed last Q2 session of the season, held at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit this afternoon, saw Movistar Yamaha MotoGP's Maverick Viñales  take part in Q1 and only just missed out on a place in the top-2, to promote to Q2. He will start tomorrow's race from 13th position.

Viñales was not among the first riders to get out at the start of the Q1 session. He lingered in the pit box for a while at the start of the 15-minute session, to be ensured of free space so he could focus on dropping a hot time. His first lap, on a medium rear tyre, put him in third place. As the other riders started to speed up, the local hero was setting personal best sectors on his second flying lap, to move up from 12th to 6th. He was keen on continuing the momentum, but ran wide in the first corner and aborted the lap to return to the box for a soft rear tyre.

He was back on his bike with six minutes left on the clock, determined to further improve on his best time. He moved up from seventh to second, posting a 1'31.030s on his fifth full lap, but was pushed back to third as the times dropped in the final minutes. He had one more try left, but was unable to better his lap time and ended the session in third place, 0.137s from first place in Q1. He will start tomorrow's race from 13th place on the grid.

Maverick Viñales

Position: 13th - Time: 1'31.030 - Laps: 8

"Normally it's difficult to really improve the bike throughout the weekend, so this is not a special scenario. However, this weekend seems to be even more difficult, but that doesn't mean we'll be settling. Anyway, I would like to remain optimistic, that we can find new options that we can test in tomorrow's warm up. In any case, I will do my best as always."

Massimo Meregalli

Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - Team Director

"The Valencia Grand Prix is proving to be a challenge for us this year. Maverick wasn't feeling as confident, though he tried many things in the practice sessions. He started the Q1 on the medium rear tyre, hoping that he would have the pace to position himself inside the top-2 without using one of the softer rear tyres, but this turned out to be impossible today. He set a good time on his second run with the softer tyre, but unfortunately it wasn't enough in the end to promote to Q2 and he took 13th position. We know that tomorrow is going to be a tough race for us. After challenging sessions, it's difficult to be confident for the race, but we still believe that we can prepare something for tomorrow."