Maverick Viñales bounced back from the disappointment of last weekend by topping the timesheets at Assen despite sticking to the same setup on his Yamaha M1 as the German GP.

Viñales began the weekend expecting to be copying his Monster Energy teammate, Fabio Quartararo’s settings, with Friday’s weather interrupting the plan and the Spaniard proving he was more than capable on his own after recording a 1’33.072 on his penultimate lap of FP1.

“Today went well, honestly,” he said from the Assen paddock this afternoon.

“I didn‘t expect to be that competitive and so fast. When I saw, in FP1, a 1‘33.0 with twenty laps on the tyre, I thought ‘That‘s a fast lap time, honestly!’

“What is tough [to understand] is that it is the same bike as Sachsenring, which is the biggest and the most strange thing” he continued, after topping the morning session on a number of occasions.

“This afternoon, I was cruising and trying to get a better understanding, so a 1’33.2s was also good. Basically, I found good grip on the bike, and I can do more or less what I want on track. I can ride the lines I like, and that seems to pay off in the lap times.”

His FP2 progress in both lap times, set-up work and tyre analysis was compromised by the incoming light rain, with a lull in action preceding an eventual return to a fully wet track and with times unable to advance, his morning efforts placed him fastest overall heading into tomorrow’s FP3.

Viñales’ Saturday plan remains to be guided by his teammate’s direction, with the Spaniard confused as to his returning form but confident of his abilities at the Dutch track.

“I’ve been good here in the past, but also in Sachsenring, I had a lot of, let’s say faith, in Sachsenring because it’s a track normally where I went very fast but everything was gone and I made my worst result. Sometimes these things happen, nobody knows why, not even me. Then you can go from last to first. Is strange because I’m doing exactly the same - I eat the same, I sleep the same. Well, today I sleep a little bit more, because the baby is all the time waking up, so it’s difficult,” he continued with a laugh.

“Tomorrow we will see what Fabio is going to do, and for sure we will have one bike prepared like him,” he concluded.