Movistar Yamaha MotoGP's Maverick Viñales kicked off the second half of the 2017 MotoGP saga today at the Automotodrom Brno, taking place in the combined timesheets
Viñales persevered through a wet first free practice and a dry afternoon session today at the fast and flowing Automotodrom Brno. Despite the great diversity in conditions, he made some fundamental first steps in preparation for this weekend‘s race.
The Spaniard needed a bit of time in FP1 to get a feel for the damp conditions at the start of the Czech Grand Prix weekend. However, he soon started chipping away at his best time and gradually upped his pace. He was 0.644s off the fastest time by the end of the session and wrapped up the morning practice in sixth place with a best lap of 2'05.845s.
The young gun had to start from zero again in the afternoon as track conditions had changed from full wet to dry. He waited at the start of FP2 and closely watched his competition out on track, in order to assess when the right time would be to bring out the slick tyres. Ten minutes into the session, he headed out and worked his way up to 11th place, with a 1'57.289s best lap, 0.957s from first.
"This morning was a good session," he said. "I feel quite good on the wet, though there are still some parts to improve, but honestly, I was feeling quite comfortable on the bike."
"This afternoon was really difficult, I never felt like that on the Yamaha before, so we have to understand which area is the problem. We need to solve these issues and try to work even harder. We really don‘t know which area is causing the problem, if we knew we would improve it. The bike is not working at its 100% and we have to try to find out why.