Maverick Viñales' life is anything but a long, quiet river...
Alternating top performances with disappointing underperformances, the Yamaha rider nevertheless tries to remain calm and positive, not sparing his workload in order to progress.
In FP1, the Catalan pole-sitter in Qatar calmly prepared for Sunday's race on the Termas de Río Hondo track, gradually increasing his pace. He tried different tire specifications and settings, but excessive spin relegated him to a very modest 18th place, 1.830s from first position.
The 24-year-old then used most of FP2 to make further set-up changes, before starting to make progress at the right time. With 15 minutes of time available, he accelerated his pace to obtain a 1'39.345s one minute from the checkered flag, which gives him provisional third place in FP2 on the first day, 0.164s behind first.
Maverick Vinales : “The impressions today were not bad. This track is completely different from Qatar, so the surface is very different and the tires work in a different way. So we had to record all the information from today and work very hard, because the bike is not at its best yet. The main thing is rear grip. In Qatar we had a lot of grip, but here we are struggling. We have to reconfirm everything, trying to fix things, especially the rear grip. We'll see, we did a good job today, we improved a lot from this morning, but our pace needs to be in the mid 1'39s if we want to be able to win the race. Of course, I will do my best to get pole tomorrow. We will work very hard and attack for this.”
Massimo Meregalli : “The start was a little tricky today, because the drivers suffered from skating this morning, especially Maverick. We had to spend quite a bit of track time during FP1 and FP2 to resolve this issue, but we managed to get both drivers comfortable by the end of FP2, so they could fight for a place in Q2. The times are tight, and the field went down the times very quickly. This means that we must continue to push as hard as possible to achieve our goal of being at the top of the timesheets. We still have areas that we can work on to improve and, therefore, we plan to increase our pace. The choice of rear tire still needs to be finalized. We need to choose the one we prefer for racing and focus on extending the life of the tire.”
MotoGP Argentinian Grand Prix, FP2 classification:
| Pos | number | Pile | Motorcycle | Chrono | 1st gap | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | Andrea Dovizioso | Ducati | 1'39.181 | ||
| 2 | 43 | Jack Miller | Ducati | 1'39.190 | 0.009 | 0.009 |
| 3 | 12 | Maverick VIÑALES | Yamaha | 1'39.345 | 0.164 | 0.155 |
| 4 | 35 | Cal Crutchlow | Honda | 1'39.346 | 0.165 | 0.001 |
| 5 | 20 | Fabio QUARTARARO | Yamaha | 1'39.357 | 0.176 | 0.011 |
| 6 | 46 | Valentino ROSSI | Yamaha | 1'39.441 | 0.260 | 0.084 |
| 7 | 42 | Alex RINS | Suzuki | 1'39.451 | 0.270 | 0.010 |
| 8 | 93 | Marc MÁRQUEZ | Honda | 1'39.497 | 0.316 | 0.046 |
| 9 | 21 | Frank MORBIDELLI | Yamaha | 1'39.503 | 0.322 | 0.006 |
| 10 | 30 | Takaaki NAKAGAMI | Honda | 1'39.629 | 0.448 | 0.126 |
| 11 | 29 | Andrea Iannone | Aprilia | 1'39.654 | 0.473 | 0.025 |
| 12 | 41 | Aleix ESPARGARÓ | Aprilia | 1'39.697 | 0.516 | 0.043 |
| 13 | 9 | Danilo PETRUCCI | Ducati | 1'39.740 | 0.559 | 0.043 |
| 14 | 63 | Francesco Bagnaia | Ducati | 1'39.799 | 0.618 | 0.059 |
| 15 | 36 | Joan Mir | Suzuki | 1'39.946 | 0.765 | 0.147 |
| 16 | 44 | Pol ESPARGARÓ | KTM | 1'39.951 | 0.770 | 0.005 |
| 17 | 5 | johann zarco | KTM | 1'39.956 | 0.775 | 0.005 |
| 18 | 17 | Karel ABRAHAM | Ducati | 1'39.995 | 0.814 | 0.039 |
| 19 | 88 | Miguel OLIVEIRA | KTM | 1'40.006 | 0.825 | 0.011 |
| 20 | 53 | Tito RABAT | Ducati | 1'40.110 | 0.929 | 0.104 |
| 21 | 99 | Jorge Lorenzo | Honda | 1'40.159 | 0.978 | 0.049 |
| 22 | 55 | Hafiz Syahrin | KTM | 1'40.752 | 1.571 | 0.593 |
