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MotoGP Qatar: Vinales gets back his corner speed with fundamental change

If there was an award for ride of the day in MotoGP, it would surely go to Maverick Vinales who fought from 15th on lap one through to sixth after a fundamanetal setup direction change re-discovered the Yamaha M1’s reason to be - corner speed.

The Spaniard was able to put in a succession of 1’55s laps, as fast or faster than the leaders, as he came through the pack and it was only a lack of acceleratio that held him behind the likes of Jack Miller on his rocketship Desmosedici.

“It’s much better entering the corners and the bike is less shaking. It’s something I like; the bike more stable and I can attack a little bit more the apex of the corners. A little more corner speed but also with the brakes,” said Vinales, speaking at the track.

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“Also I didn’t make problems in the acceleration because I win in the middle of the corner. It’s something I demand many, many times to do. But we did it here on the race weekend. I was a bit pissed off because if my ‘55s came much earlier I could maybe have been fighting for the podium.

“So for sure I was pissed off, but in the same way I was very happy because the team never gave up and finally, with patience, we found a really good set-up. Something I like. I felt that in the last laps it was the Maverick as always. Pushing, getting faster and faster through all the race.

“It looked like the set-up of the bike was for the last ten laps of the race, but I think it was more about the power and the electronics than the setup. I felt really good on the brakes, so it means that there was not enough power on the bike to try to attack the other riders.

“It was so difficult to pass Brad and then Aleix and also Jack. I lost so much time behind Jack because I could not attack him. Not enough power on the bike in acceleration.

“But this is because we didn’t focus on the electronics for the race, we focussed to find the setup and it works. We took the opposite direction to the test, we went harder in the front, different stiffness on the rear.”

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