Vinales continued evaluating the 2021 chassis on Thursday, driving three different specs from Yamaha en route to the top of the timesheets with a time of 1: 53.244 minutes.
The eight-time race winner spent the first test focusing on his own riding style and was “surprised” at how good his long-distance pace was on the 2020 bike.
And again on Thursday, Vinales showed the strongest pace with a series of laps in the middle of 1: 54 minutes after having worked a lot on “no-grip riding” – a scenario in which the Yamaha has usually been weak in recent years.
He admits that the fact that the track in Qatar is saturated with MotoGP rubber makes it difficult to definitely know if the Yamaha has improved in poor grip conditions in 2021, but was countered by its fast lap times when using a rear tire End of life encouraged.
“We focused very much on driving without grip, which is always difficult because the track has incredible grip,” said Vinales on Thursday.
“The grip level of the track is amazing so it’s very hard to say that we are ready for a non-grip situation because as you can see all the lap times are super fast.
“Still, I feel good on my bike, which is the most important thing, and the final laps on the tire are always good too.
“So we’ll see. Of course it will be different in the race, but we stay positive because we think the bike is ready. “
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Teammate Fabio Quartararo completed the top three on Thursday after he felt “more comfortable” on the 2021 chassis, although he had tried things on his M1 that “I didn’t really like”.
But just as he was voicing his concern about Yamaha’s overtaking potential in Qatar on Wednesday, Quartararo anticipates the M1 will struggle with lowering grip distances after Losail’s double header earlier this season.
“To be honest, I’ve tried a lot of things that I didn’t really like, but the pace actually looks good,” he said on Thursday when Motorsport.com asked him how he felt about the 2021 chassis.
“Even when we’ve tried something that doesn’t work with multiple tires, we do high 1m54s.
“To be honest, I wasn’t that happy today, but given the pace, I think we can be happy and every time I feel more comfortable with the 2021 chassis.”
When asked how the bike would perform in the races in Qatar and on other circuits, he added: “I think it will be different for sure, because right now the condition of the track is completely different from the conditions for that we’ll have the race because the grip we have is unreal.
“To be honest, the rubber we have on the track is, in my opinion, not the right grip we will have for the race.
“In my opinion [regarding] In my opinion, the bike feels really, really good because the track has a lot of grip.
“Well, I think we’re going to fight in Portimao … tracks with little grip. I think we will fight.
“It is not common for us to see three Yamahas upstairs. During the test we know that we are always fast, we are fast in one lap.
“But for the past two years I’ve been too confident about the tests. Now I think it’s important not to be so happy before the races. “