The final fight in FP2 of the MotoGP Italian Grand Prix was a borderline affair, with constant swapping of positions on the timesheets, one of the most significant being that of Maverick Vinales, who was in the top ten for all day and, at the last moment, he fell from the positions that give access to Q2 directly by 11 thousandths of a second.
The interesting thing is that in his last two attempts at fast laps, Maverick had Marc Marquez in tow, and it was the Honda rider who followed the Aprilia’s tail in Q2, pushing Mack out.
“That’s right, these things happen. Today we had a lot of preheated tires and we weren’t able to get the maximum performance or what we expected. We have to understand it and keep improving,” the Aprilia rider initially said, without wanting to dramatize too much. the situation.
However, Maverick reacted when asked about the slipstream issue after what happened with Marquez, and was asked if the strategy for Saturday’s Q1 and, if he qualifies, Q2 will focus on not letting them follow him. by any pilot, so that the same thing does not happen to him.
“Obviously yes, but it’s not about being legal or not, honestly I don’t care if he (Marquez) follows me, but tomorrow whoever comes after me will be scared, because I’ll nail the brakes, I assure you. I’m not joking. But today it didn’t matter to me, I was suffering with the front tire and I thought I’d just go for a lap. I’ll work on Saturday because I was at the limit with the front tyre,” he added.
Maverick was very annoyed by a bad tire (a hard front).
“The truth is that I had a lot of bouncing at the front and we need to understand why. But we more or less know why, so tomorrow we have to go full throttle”, with the aim of conquering one of the two places for Q2 up for grabs in Q1 .
Maverick Vinales, Aprilia Racing Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Between the tire problem and Marc following him, Maverick sat out at the end.
“I don’t think this is the reason why I didn’t qualify. We simply weren’t able to take full advantage of our bike today, which was ready to go faster. But we had a lot of problems, especially with the front tyre. and that’s what you need to understand. In other parts of the circuit I was going very fast, so that means there’s a problem.”
“We went very well in the morning, the pace was good, we worked towards the race, but in the afternoon, when I changed the front tyre, I saw that things weren’t going well. When you have jumping it’s usually a very fast vibration and then it passes, but this time it was very strange, it was like a slow bounce, very strange”.
The problem, in essence, was that the hard front tire fitted by Maverick was a so-called preheated tyre, a tire that was intended to be used at a previous Grand Prix but which, in the end, was not used.
“We have to talk to Michelin to understand what happened, but they tell us it was an old tire from four or five Grands Prix ago. Sometimes it happens, especially on Fridays, when you take the tires off,” said the Costa Brava.
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Maverick Vinales, Aprilia Racing Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
