Viñales: "If you start from so far back, that's a jungle, nobody respects anything"

September 19, 2022

Maverick Viñales and Aleix Espargaró are a couple that does not usually fall, and both rolled on the ground at some point during the weekend in Alcañiz. The #41 did it on Friday and twice, while his workshop neighbor did it on Saturday, while trying to sneak into the second sieve of the timed. That relegated him to the catacombs of the grid with a view to Sunday, and from that it is explained how Aleix (he went to Q2 and placed fourth) found the way to get back on the box, and to cross the finish line 12 seconds before than his workshop neighbor.

The bad start to the Grand Prix, with various technical problems on the Aprilia de Viñales, caused a chain of complications that, according to him, explain how a weekend that on paper should have served to show all its strength, ended in a very discreet way. . The setbacks on Friday led the Catalan to force more than necessary on Saturday and that ended with his first fall on top of the RSV-GP. His starting position, in the sixth row, left him exposed to the hodgepodge that was generated when the traffic lights went out, and that cut up the group and left him with hardly any options to go up.

“Starting behind is what it has, because you find slower riders. Then you try to overtake them and you go long. Starting from the front makes life easier for you, and doing it from behind conditions you the whole race”, summed up Viñales, who watched very closely the accidents of Fabio Quartararo and Takaaki Nakagami, whom he had to avoid with an escape maneuver at the last moment. “If you start 16th, that’s a jungle, nobody respects anything. When you go out in front, everyone is very considerate. Behind, you release the brakes and pull”, reflected the #12, who insisted on the fate of the two biggest victims : “Everything happened there. I saw Fabio’s bike against Alex Rins’s, then Nakagami, whom I was about to eat.”

For the man from Girona, the alliance with his Aprilia is at its best ever, as the data left by the race showed, and now all that remains is to put together a weekend in which all the pieces fit together, in order to celebrate that long-awaited first win under the Noale brand.

“I feel strong, but we have not worked well all weekend. That prevented us from finishing where we should have. After the race I saw my times, and I thought that, if I had started higher, I would have been able to fight for the podium It would not have been enough for me to fight with Pecco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini, but to be between them and Aleix”, concluded Mack.

Maverick Viñales, Aprilia Racing Team