Maverick Viñales did not follow his podium successes at Assen and Silverstone, and at Spielberg he finished the Austrian Grand Prix in 13th place after a seventh place finish. According to motogp.com, for the Aprilia rider it was a survival race as the #12 started to lose performance on the rear tire after the first few laps.
“I’m not happy with the position, but I’m happy with part of the races. We found positive things, especially at the start and in the first laps, it went really well. We made a mistake with the tires with the rear choice, after five laps I had no rear tire left. I just tried to push from the start, I was catching that leading group and then I started to feel a drop with the tire, I couldn’t do anything. I just tried to bring the bike home, to take points and I can’t wait to be at Misano. I mean it’s been a good weekend for us, we’ve learned a lot, and now we’re back to the normal type of tires that work well on the bike and we can continue as we want,’ he explained.
Admitting that it was a mistake to choose the soft compound, Viñales justifies why the medium compound was not chosen:
– I can’t wait but I think today we had a great chance because I started well, I had a good pace but we just didn’t trust the medium, didn’t choose the medium rear tire was clearly a big mistake. But in the end, that’s the bet we took and it didn’t pay off, it’s not Christmas every day, so you have to try to work even harder, especially in training to understand it before. We tried while warming up, but unfortunately it started raining so we couldn’t try when the mids started working. It was a difficult weekend but in the end we found a lot of positive things on the bike and my riding style has improved a lot, so I’m looking forward to being at Misano because I think we can be back to the top.
In this way, this error is a lesson for the future: “Of course, the motivation is really high. I mean, the goal is to try to win races and we are working on that. As I mentioned, we didn’t trust the medium, we bet on the soft and it was a bad decision, so we will take note for the future and we will definitely learn from this mistake.
