Vinales feels 'fantastic' in wet and dry, Rossi Qualifying 1
After struggling to recognise his Yamaha on the way to eleventh place in Friday practice -"it's like a totally different bike" - Maverick Vinales made big progress to top Free Practice 3 at the Austrian MotoGP.
The drying track allowed slicks for the final 15-minutes, with a visibly confident Vinales surging to the top on his 20th of 22 laps.
More importantly, the Spaniard's 1m 24.193s lap time was also good enough for third overall, behind KTM's Pol Espargaro and Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso, putting Vinales safely through to this afternoon's Qualifying 2.
After struggling to recognise his Yamaha on the way to eleventh place in Friday practice -"it's like a totally different bike" - Maverick Vinales made big progress to top Free Practice 3 at the Austrian MotoGP.
The drying track allowed slicks for the final 15-minutes, with a visibly confident Vinales surging to the top on his 20th of 22 laps.
More importantly, the Spaniard's 1m 24.193s lap time was also good enough for third overall, behind KTM's Pol Espargaro and Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso, putting Vinales safely through to this afternoon's Qualifying 2.
"I think for today it was really important to get through to Q2, because the weather conditions are changing so fast here, and this could also happen during qualifying. So, for me it was really important to stay inside the top 10," Vinales said.
"Already on the wet the feeling was amazing, I could make really good lap times, and then when I switched to the dry tyres the feeling continued, and I felt great on the bike.
"I‘m very happy with the team, because we worked really well from yesterday to today, and I think we made a big improvement on the bike, especially in terms of consistency.
"For the afternoon, we will try to make more laps on the bike, trying to understand what is the best way for us to go fast and also to understand the tyres, because if tomorrow is a flag-to-flag race we will need to know which tyre we should use.
"Anyway, with the track going from wet to dry this morning, I felt fantastic on bike."
It wasn't such good news on the other side of the Monster Yamaha pits, with team-mate Valentino Rossi eleventh fastest in FP3 (+0.704s) and remaining 13th on combined times.
The Italian must now battle the likes of Johann Zarco, Danilo Petrucci, Cal Crutchlow and Brad Binder for a top two place in Qualifying 1.
"These were very tricky conditions," Rossi said. "Later on in the FP3 session the track became dry, but this is always difficult, and in the end I wasn't able to improve on my FP1 lap time, so I'm out of Q2.
"It will be harder, because we have to take part in Q1 this afternoon, and we'll have to wait and see what the weather is going to be like."
Peter has been in the paddock for 20 years and has seen Valentino Rossi come and go. He is at the forefront of the Suzuki exit story and Marc Marquez’s injury issues.
