Maverick Vinales is back on the roller coaster. A week ago in Misano he was at the highest point, today in Barcelona he collapsed again, finished the race in 9th place, which was only good for a few points. Meanwhile, the other Yamahas were fighting for the podium in Montmelò.
“Nothing went according to plan today – commented the Spaniard – When I started and saw Miller, Zarco, Miller and Petrucci overtake me as if they were on airplanes, I realized that it was going to be a difficult day. “
The start was so disastrous that the first thought was that he had a problem with his M1. It wasn’t the case …
“We just don’t have the strength – Maverick cleared up – I came into the first corner in a funnel, too slow, I couldn’t do much. I was 16 laps behind Aleix Espargarò and Crutchlow and it was impossible to overtake them, I could just wait for them to have problems with the tires and then attack them from the outside when braking. It was a crazy maneuver, I risked a crash. “
As so often in the past, Vinales has no explanation.
“There’s not much to say, when you’re behind someone with the Yamaha, you can’t overtake – he continued – I struggled with grip a lot this weekend, we changed the bike a lot, maybe too much and we lost direction. In the warm-up I tried a completely different setup, we didn’t know what to choose. We didn’t do a good job ”.
It’s hard for him to say anything positive about the weekend …
“To race or not to race today wouldn’t have made much difference – he continued – the only thing I could do was reach the finish line to fight for every point. When you come from a win and then have a catastrophic race, you don’t understand a lot, you feel lost ”.
The more Vinales tries to analyze the situation, the less the real origin of his problems can be understood …
“Here in Barcelona I had problems with the front wheel locking, we fixed them, but we got worse in the other areas – he explained – the problem is that with Yamaha you have to start over when I do mine Race. ”Would have been very different. I had good pace and I know that if I’m the first in the first corner I can win. But here in Barcelona you put 5th gear in front of the first corner and everyone overtook me. “
From then on it was a disaster.
“It’s hard to digest winning one Sunday and winning the next 15. – said Maverick – Today I was the slowest on the straight with Morbidelli, although I spent the whole race in the slipstream of other drivers. I was always on the limiter, the bike doesn’t work in 5th and 6th gear and when I’m behind someone I can’t even take advantage of the braking or I risk colliding with them. I ran for a second, a second and a half, slower than my pace.
It doesn’t seem easy to find a solution to these problems …
“Unfortunately we will have the same engine in 2021 – he said – When you make an effort and keep facing the same problems over and over again, it is difficult to keep motivation going. I had the pace to stay ahead, which means that next time I’ll try to be first at the start. “