Yamaha going better, I’m feeling positive – Vinales

Maverick Vinales says he is positive about his chances in Austria this weekend after a strong run to second quickest during the Friday free practice at the Red Bull Ring.

The Spaniard missed out on snatching the top spot from Marc Marquez by a mere 0.066s as the quickest of the soft-shod riders attempting to usurp the runaway MotoGP championship leader in the final minutes of FP2.

Despite just missing out on the top spot, Vinales intimates it was a better result than he anticipated around a circuit that traditionally hasn’t favoured the Yamaha in the past, giving him confidence ahead of qualifying.

“The feeling has been quite positive,” he said. ‘We‘ve been working a lot on the bike, trying to understand in which direction we should go. I think we might have found something good to better my rhythm, but we still have to improve.

“We just missed out on first place, but I‘m feeling positive. Being second in FP2 here is really good for us, this is a track where we suffer a lot. This year it seems to be going better, so we are in a good way and will try to keep improving things tomorrow.

“We‘re going to try to be on the first row and then we‘ll see. Today we tried the tyres and we have more or less some ideas for tomorrow, so we‘re going to be working very hard.”