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This weekend’s Dutch TT at Assen is nothing more than a sticking plaster for the problems that poleman Maverick Vinales has been experiencing of late at the Monster Energy Yamaha team. Going from last to first in the space of only a week since the German Grand Prix, he’s still no closer to actually finding a solution to his problems despite today’s result.
The Spaniard finished dead last at the Sachsenring, the first-ever finish of his MotoGP career outside the points, only to then top almost every session in Assen and to set a new lap record en route to stealing pole position from his team-mate Fabio Quartararo.
But after a woeful race last time out and a generally poor season since taking an utterly dominant victory in the opening race of the year in Qatar in March, he’s adamant that the Dutch race is simply one of the few chances he has this year of a strong result thanks to the track more than anything else.
“Basically, I have grip so I can be fast,” he explained after qualifying when asked by The Race about the contrast with Sachsenring’s performance. “With MotoGP bikes you have to create grip, and if you don’t have grip you need a bike that turns. When I have grip I can turn and without it, it’s very difficult.
“Nobody knows the answer to the problem, but it costs me many bad results and many races. I just wait for the opportunity to have these things, because in the end we never lose the speed.
“The Yamaha, when you have good feeling and can create these things, is a fantastic bike. You can do whatever you want with the bike on the track. But the problem is that it happens four times a year.
“We’ll see, but I’m positive to change the result from Sachsenring and maybe if we collect good data from here we can improve in the next races.”
He also hit out at suggestions that the problems were anything to do with his mental approach rather than the bike, insisting that he’s retained his cool as much as possible in the face of a substantial amount of criticism of late.
That criticism has in large part come as his team-mate Quartararo has racked up race wins in the interim, taking three victories so far this year and leading the championship by a healthy margin ahead of tomorrow’s race.
“What do you want?” a laughing Vinales replied when asked about working to maintain his own calm. “That I sleep in the box, with too much calm?
“It’s enough, I cannot wait more races. It’s enough to have five-six races in a row which are really bad results. Which is tough is that, normally even if I had not-good grip conditions, I could make one lap and be at the front, but in the last races I crash maybe once per race [weekend] where before I wouldn’t crash all season.
“For me this is an indicator that we’re far away. But I can’t be more calm.”
Using Quartararo’s set-up was something that Vinales did suggest trying out this weekend, with his team going as far as preparing one of Vinales’ machines with identical settings to the other side of the garage.
But, with speed coming naturally to him using the exact same settings he finished the German race in last place with, Vinales instead says that he wants to simply try to take the maximum from what he’s found to be working for him.
“I think that this is the race [weekend] that I have spent the least time in the box, just a few times to check a few corners.
“I have one bike like Fabio’s but I had such a great feeling with my bike that I didn’t want to touch it.
“I felt many positive things in some parts of the track, which keeps the tyre in a good mood for many laps, and I don’t want to touch that, to lose the feeling.
“I didn’t try it [Quartararo’s set-up] in the end, because I didn’t want to lose the feeling I had with the bike. I have three or four points on the track where I can be fast, and I don’t want to lose that.
“I’m also quite good on stability and that’s quite important at Assen, so I didn’t want to lose it either. I know that I’m strong in a few corners, that I’m able to overtake, and we’ll see what happens.”
