Maverick Vinales’ glum verdict: Aprilia “lowered potential”

Maverick Vinales says 13th in the British Grand Prix is “difficult to accept” as he feels Aprilia’s MotoGP rivals haven’t gained on it but that it has “lowered the potential” of the bike.

Having started the British GP weekend strongly and securing pole with Aleix Espargaro, Aprilia was expected to challenge for a repeat of its 2023 Silverstone victory.

But high tyre wear saw Espargaro fall out of the podium battle to only just cling onto sixth, while Vinales went backwards from eighth to 13th in the grand prix having failed to advance on his qualifying position in the sprint.

Vinales told the media after Sunday’s race that his medium rear tyre severely lost grip after six laps, which led to him finishing 26.7 seconds off the victory and around 15s shy of team-mate Espargaro.

With Silverstone continuing Vinales’ lacklustre run of late, he has called for Aprilia to take stock of the situation as he doesn’t believe Ducati has made bigger gains than the Noale marque.

“Difficult to accept the result,” he said to media including Crash.net at Silverstone.

“Honestly, it’s not what we are looking for. But we need to understand that there is something missing because it’s not even normal the degradation of the rear tyre [I suffered].

“So, we must understand why in the last four races we haven’t been at the level we should have been.

“It’s true that in the sprint sometimes I was able to fight, but as soon as we put the medium tyre we were really just trying to cruise and were not really strong.

“So, it’s important for the factory to stop a little bit and think how we can reverse this situation because it’s getting worse and worse. So, we need to see how we can get up again.”

Battling with traction issues in the sprint, Vinales says this wasn’t a factor in the grand prix, adding: “We left the bike more open [in terms of traction control setting], trying to control as a rider all of the slide and to be honest the spin was under control all the time.

“So it’s not a matter of spin, because the tyre after six laps was completely gone. I passed from 1m59s to 2m01s.

"So, we need to understand what is causing this tyre consumption because I never passed the spin limit all the race.

“It seems that somehow we lost the way to be competitive. I don’t think Ducati improved, I just think we lowered the potential because we need to get back again.

“I’m trying to understand what we are missing, but it’s hard because I’m riding the bike on the limit, but the lap time and the way we are managing the tyres is wrong.”

Vinales also noted that he doesn’t believe his medium rear tyre in the grand prix was defective as he would have struggled from the off in that case, while suggesting that a change in how Aprilia works with used rubber in practice could be something to consider in future rounds.