Yamaha rider Maverick Viñales showed competitive speed in Q1, but unfortunately the Spaniard just missed out on promoting to the second qualifying session and finished in 14th place.
After finishing outside the top-10 in the morning's FP3 session, Viñales had to enter Q1 but looked to be a strong contender for advancement to Q2.
He didn‘t linger at the start of the first qualifying heat and immediately set the provisional fastest time on his first flying lap, but dropped back to third place when he visited the pit box to put in an extra soft tyre.
He was sitting in fourth position when he resumed his attack and set a 1‘55.916s for second place, but was pushed back two positions in the final stages.
Back in fourth place, the Factory Yamaha rider put this head down once more, but was unable to further improve his position in the timesheets. He will start tomorrow's race from fifth row on the grid, from 14th place.
“I had the same problem today as I had all year in the wet: I had a lot of spin and couldn‘t ride the bike the way I wanted to in these conditions. We are working hard and giving it everything,” he said. “The qualifying result is what it is and now we focus on working for tomorrow. We know where we‘re losing time, but it‘s difficult to fix it in just one weekend. We are going to do our best, we‘ll try to improve for tomorrow and score as many points as possible.”
