Soggy Sachsenring puts a strain on Maverick Viñales

Grey skies and wet asphalt at the Sachsenring set the scene at the start of today’s Q2 shoot-out that saw Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales secure ninth and eleventh place on the grid for tomorrow’s GoPro Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland.

Viñales displayed his confidence in today’s dry morning free practice session but struggled to reproduce the results in the afternoon in the wet Q2 session. He went straight into action as soon as the green light signalled the start of the 15-minute time attack and slotted into fourth place. He improved his time but not his position on his next lap and was looking to keep the momentum going, but lost valuable seconds as he got involved in a small collision with Marc Marquez.

Despite the incident, the Yamaha rider tried to quickly get back into a good rhythm and, though he continued to struggle to get a feel for the wet conditions, he dug deep and climbed back up from twelfth to ninth, dipping under the 1’29 mark with a 1’28.823s. He had three more attempts at beating his personal best time, but was unable to improve and ended the day in 11th place, 1.521s from the front.

Maverick Viñales:

“I’m feeling quite confident on the dry, but unfortunately we couldn’t improve the wet setting in the afternoon. I was feeling quite strong on the brakes and carrying corner speed, but I suffered from not having enough traction whilst accelerating out of the corner. If it’s dry tomorrow, I hope for a good start and I will push myself to be on the limit on every lap and I will try to be on the podium, that will be very important. Either being on the podium or even trying to win: we have to stay open-minded. If it’s wet tomorrow, we will continue to try to improve the bike and manage the situation as best we can.”