Cautious Start for Movistar Yamaha on Soaked Opening Day in Spain

Maverick Viñales started the fourth round of the 2017 MotoGP World Championship today at an overcast Circuito de Jerez. While rain dampened the pace in FP1, the Movistar Yamaha MotoGP racer rounded up the FP2 session in Spanish sunshine, taking sixth place respectively and the same positions in the combined time sheets. Eager to claim a position in the top ten at the end of the first day, Viñales headed out on track to get familiar with the circuit. However, wet track conditions and persistent rain meant he had to stay cautious. The Spaniard was aware that the weather was predicted to clear up later in the day, so he took no unnecessary risks and set a best time of 1'52.555s, 0.907s from first, earning him tenth place. The young gun made great progress in the afternoon when the sun came out. He improved to a 1‘41.718s and was on course to better his position, when a small crash in turn nine lost him some track time. Fortunately uninjured, Viñales hurried back to the pit box. This slight set-back didn't stop him from pushing at the end of the session, when he set a 1‘40.379s lap for sixth place, 0.959s from first. Maverick Viñales I‘m OK. I went a little bit outside of the race line and there were some wet patches. As I told the team, I didn‘t have the chance to pick up the bike again, so I crashed. Anyway, after I exited pit lane again, I was feeling good with the bike. We still have to improve some areas, but I‘m quite happy overall, we did a good lap time. Finally for tomorrow, we have to make a good FP3 to go directly into Q2, so we still have to do some work. I tried the aero-fairing, but we still have to try it again tomorrow, because today the track was 50/50 and it was difficult to understand if it was better or not. Massimo Meregalli Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team - Team Director There was rain predicted for today and it certainly played a role in FP1 and FP2. The track conditions were very tricky in the morning, so we were careful not to take any risks, especially since we expect tomorrow and Sunday to be dry. We made most of the situation to work on a wet setting, that still needs to be improved on this year‘s bike. In the afternoon there were many wet patches on the track and unfortunately Maverick got caught out by one in turn 9 and lost the front. Luckily, he was left unhurt and was able to improve his time We have work to do on both sides of the garage to fine-tune the settings for tomorrow‘s FP3 and we expect the condition of the track to become better too, which will allow us to exploit our bike‘s strongest points.