until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
When the 2022 MotoGP pre-season first got underway, Aprilia rider Maverick Vinales looked to have put the troubles of his tumultuous 2021 behind him as he got the year off to a flying start.
But two rounds into the new championship, that form has so far failed to materialise at race weekends – which makes his latest comments on his state of play after the Indonesian Grand Prix all the more surprising.
Vinales looked like his old self during this year’s two tests at Sepang and Mandalika, consistently at the sharp end of the pack. Fifth and eighth at the end of those two outings perhaps didn’t even reflect the actual race pace he was able to display.
Of course, given his previous Yamaha forte of dominating pre-season and post-race tests but being unable to wholly capitalise on it on Sundays, there were more than a few comments suggesting that we were witnessing a return to true Vinales form.
He had essentially stepped out of one factory team and into another with his mid-season switch to Aprilia following the incredible and bitter end to his Yamaha employment, amid accusations of deliberately attempting to blow the engine of his M1 during a race at the Red Bull Ring. But it immediately seemed like he had found a happier home at Aprilia.
And while he joined his new team honest and upfront about how long the process of converting both himself from an inline four engine rider into a V4 racer would take, as well as how long it would take Aprilia to understand him, pre-season testing was the first sign that things were going in the right direction after a handful of promising if not spectacular races to end the 2021 season.
But when the lights went out for the first time this year in Qatar – a circuit where he took his often-forgotten final Yamaha victory only 12 months prior – it didn’t quite go to plan. Finishing the race in 12th, 23 seconds off winner Enea Bastianini, and (perhaps more importantly) over 20s from team-mate Aleix Espargaro in fourth, wasn’t the start to the year many expected.
Things were no better at Mandalika, either, as Vinales ended the race outside the points in 16th.
But with unexpected rain arriving for that particular race and somewhat skewing the results, Vinales ended the day absolutely delighted with what he had achieved – just not in the day’s main event but in the morning warm-up session.
“Even though the result is certainly not the one we wanted, it was a positive weekend,” he said. “It was perhaps the most important day of growth for me since joining Aprilia because we found a really good setting that I was able to go fast with in the warm-up session and that I was comfortable with even in wet conditions.
“It was a survival race at the beginning. You couldn’t see the bike in front, so it was very hard. I lost 15 seconds in four laps, so it was pretty tough. But at the end of the race, I had a good rhythm, good laptimes.
“I’m happy with the work we did here. We are taking a step closer to the best with every round. We feel that if we qualify in the front, we can be in the front, and I can’t wait to get to Argentina to continue this positive trend.”
It might not quite have been the start to the year Vinales was expecting, but it’s worth remembering that the act of jumping from one manufacturer to another and winning with ease – a feat so far only really accomplished in the modern era by Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner and Vinales himself with his previous Suzuki to Yamaha move – is the exception rather than the rule.
Other big names, the likes of Jorge Lorenzo and Pol Espargaro, have learned of late just how difficult it can be to adapt yourself to a whole new bike. And given the fact that he left Yamaha for a machine with somewhat similar characteristics to the Aprilia, it should be the Lorenzo story that gives Vinales the most hope for the future.
Three-time premier class champion Lorenzo took almost a year and a half to finally figured out how to go fast on a Ducati – and needed extensive work from the manufacturer to get to that point, too, as he cried out for ergonomic adjustments to the Desmosedici to make him more comfortable and give him the feeling he required.
That’s a lesson that’s been heeded since by every manufacturer on the grid, and Vinales will have much less of a struggle internally to transform the Aprilia – something already witnessed in the dramatic repackaging of the bike that happened over winter to make a smaller, lighter and more nimble machine.
Vinales sounds like he has very much found a base setting on the bike to build on – something we’ll find out for certain at this weekend’s Argentina race – so there’s still plenty of time for him to find his feet and get back to winning ways before he should be written off.
