Jerez test leader Vinales has 'best day on the bike'

Maverick Vinales will head for the French Grand Prix at Le Mans next weekend with renewed confidence after making big steps towards solving his braking weakness at the Jerez MotoGP test.

The Monster Yamaha rider felt that braking was the only area where he was losing time to team-mate Fabio Quartararo, who dominated the Spanish Grand Prix weekend until being struck by chronic arm-pump problems while leading the race.

"We look at any Yamaha data and try to take the best from any rider, so basically with Fabio I was just losing on braking. Pretty similar to in 2019," Vinales explained.

"I was really good in the other parts of the track but just on braking I lose everything. So we concentrated a lot on that today."

The Spaniard, who finished seventh in Sunday's race, set about finding a solution during a mammoth 101 laps, which is over four grand prix distances.

"I just needed to work a lot on the bike by myself, trying to understand how to brake later," he said.

"But at the end of the day I just found a better balance on the bike and somehow I was much more precise in sector 1 and sector 3, which I needed to improve. Basically, we gained a lot of confidence in the front tyre… We improved quite a lot.

"Honestly, this is my best day on the bike and I will arrive at Le Mans with a very nice feeling."

Vinales set the best lap of the test, a 1m 36.879s, late in the afternoon, putting him 0.034s quicker than Suzuki's Alex Rins.

"This morning was really good grip because with medium tyres I was able to do '37.1, with the base set-up, so perfect conditions," said the Qatar race winner. "But this afternoon changed quite a lot.

"I'm quite happy because at the end of the day the lap times were very fast, even if the conditions were very tricky because of the wind."

The only hiccup had been a small oil leak.

"I just lost some oil and so I decided to get off the track as soon as I felt it, but no big problem. They fixed it and it was okay."

Team-mate Quartararo missed the test as he sought medical advice regarding his arm pump issue.

Vinales is third in the world championship, and the top Yamaha rider, heading to round 5 at Le Mans.