Maverick Viñales began his second weekend as an Aprilia rider at the top of the timesheets after beating Joan Mir by 0.08s in FP1 at Misano.

The perfect start to his new team’s home race, and having already tested at the Rimini track a fortnight ago, Viñales is taking the progress in his stride. Aware there is still much to learn but satisfied with the confidence he’s already feeling.

“I’m especially pleased that I found good sensations straight away,” he explained on Friday. “Having already tested here, I am clearly more prepared than in Aragón, but we are still talking about a new bike and a new team. The feeling has been totally different than in Aragón.

“Here I have much more feeling with the bike, which also in the test I did - I felt much more comfortable than in MotorLand. Anyway we take step by step. I know we work in a good way today, we understand a few more points on the bike. We are trying different things. So, overall, everything is very positive because step by step, we are getting more comfortable on the bike.

“We don’t look too much at the position, we just look the feeling and the feeling today was much better than the previous days. Then on rain, I felt good. I felt good potential on the bike. I need to do more laps because I need to get confident with the front. I go step by step but, it was good. Not too far away with feeling on the wet and this is fantastic.

“We are also improving in terms of how we work in the garage. The team is getting to know me and they understand which changes are the right ones to suit my needs. It’s a process and we are tackling it calmly and without getting caught up in the euphoria. What I want is consistency - to find a good base to work on so that we can be consistently fast.”

Sitting at the top of the standings after 45 minutes on track this morning is an impressive performance to start only his fourth day of competitive action with the RS-GP but the Spaniard it seems, is playing it down.

“It just confirms we have speed,” he said on the subject, “but sometimes is pretty hard. We need to still understand what I need, what the bike needs. It’s all a learning process, but one thing is clear, is that we have speed, we can be very fast but we need to understand why and why not, so this is the most important.

“Actually on braking and on the entry in the corners, I feel much more comfortable, with much more confidence and this makes big difference on this bike,” he continued. “Actually you do the lap-time by braking and by entry in the corner so I feel a big difference on that but anyway we keep calm. We know our potential, we know what we can do in the future, and we need to build up step by step and with a lot of calmness, is just our fourth day on the bike.”