Maverick Viñales seals fifth in San Marino race

After the first couple of corners, at the start of the 27-lap challenge, Viñales slotted into fifth place. He was under pressure from Álex Rins but defended his position skilfully on the opening lap. The Yamaha rider then briefly moved up to fourth place when Jack Miller crashed out, but soon fell back two places as the battle with Rins continued and also Cal Crutchlow got involved.

Viñales spent a large part of the race stalking Rins and Crutchlow who were battling for fourth place, but he wasn’t able to join in on the fight. As the race went on, the gap between the riders expanded slowly. A late crash by Jorge Lorenzo saw the number-25 rider gain a place and finish in fifth position, 16.016s from first.

Viñales remains in fifth place with 97-point gap to first and a 6-point gap to fourth. Yamaha holds third place in the Constructor Championship after the race in Misano, with a 62-point margin to first, while the Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team hold third position in the team standings with a 22-point gap to first.

The Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team will be back in action in two weeks’ time at the MotorLand Aragón track for the Gran Premio Movistar de Aragón, held from September 21st – 23rd.

Maverick Viñales:

“It was really difficult. After the start I was really happy, actually, in the second corner because I thought ‘Now I take the slipstream from the fast guys and I will keep it up until the end’, because I felt really strong in FP4 and I felt I could do it. But we had quite a big drop in feeling from the Saturday to the Sunday, so we have to check what happened on the bike better, but it’s still difficult. It’s been a year and a half that we have been suffering in the races and we still have to understand what the point is where we lose out. Aragon will also be difficult because it’s hot and slippery, but we have some ideas for improvement that we can try. One of them is braking areas, as today I suffered a lot with the front tyre, so let’s see.”