Maverick Viñales to start the Aragon GP from P2 on the grid

The pressure was on, this afternoon at the MotorLand Aragón. The level of competition was high during the Q2 session, but Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP‘s Maverick Viñales still achieved the objective he set for himself: he qualified on the front row for tomorrow‘s race, taking second place.

Viñales waited for the other 11 riders in Q2 to leave pit lane ahead of him, before starting the hot lap shoot-out. His first lap put him in fourth place, but he was just getting warmed up. He set three red-sectors and an orange sector next, to briefly move up to third but was soon back in his former position. He then quickly returned to the pit box.

With five and half minutes on the clock, the Spaniard headed back out with a clear idea of the performance needed to get a spot on the front row. At the outset he had five riders trailing him, but they couldn‘t match the speed of the YZR-M1. Top Gun set a 1‘47.125s to take over the number-one spot and shaved off another 0.003s on the follow-up, but it wasn‘t enough. Unable to improve on his last try, his 1‘47.122s time, set on lap 7/8, put him in second place, just 0.046s from first.

Maverick Viñales:

I‘m quite happy, honestly. The lap times I set today I did while riding alone, which is good. I was feeling a little bit better with the first tyre. On that tyre I could set my best first sector. I also ran into some traffic in sector 3, so I couldn‘t really set my very best lap today but, anyway, I‘m really happy. I couldn‘t ask for much more than this. The rhythm is good and I feel incredible, this is the most important. I‘m enjoying the laps. Aragon is a track I really like, so tomorrow I will go for the maximum. For tomorrow we are going to try to improve a little bit more and try to be more consistent, but I‘m very pleased about the first two days here. I think we can do a good job tomorrow.