MotoGP, Vinales: "With these conditions if they were testing I wouldn't have gone out"

It was a Saturday to file for the two Aprilia bikes of Maverick and Aleix. After a distinctly positive start to the weekend, adverse weather shuffled the field again. A strategy error with the tires in qualifying relegated them 11th and 12th at the bottom of Q2. In the Sprint then the ambiguous conditions of the track ,which misled the vast majority of the riders, lead Aleix to lose the front in the early stages of the race, while Vinales still competing in the middle of the race will then also lose control of his RS-GP24 coming out of corners, with him as many as 14 other riders. The two Spaniards thus point the finger at the race management decisions, which should not have allowed the race to run or at least stopped the race once they realized the problem.

"It was a complicated day, but unfortunately we don't control the weather, " Vinales interjected . "After the suboptimal qualifying, in the race I saw many riders crash and I thought that at least I shouldn't have overtaken, but then it was my turn ," he later commented self-deprecatingly. "It' s not about the tires but about the track conditions. In the end 95 percent of the track was dry but that 5 percent that was wet was exactly in the middle of the lines. Especially at Turn 5 it wasn't even visible. During the warm-up I had turned around to make sure, and it looked dry throughout the entire corner. It was impossible to notice, and it was the same in the last corner. I think after Binder and the other riders fell, Race Direction should have realized that the track was not in a safe condition for these bikes. As for me I fell in my line without any signal, you have to be careful in these conditions because it is really easy for an accident to become more serious . But tomorrow I expect a different race and I think we can do well, if I look at the lap times we are in line with Marquez and Martin, this is positive, now we just have to do better in qualifying."

Many riders crashed, also a matter of bad luck?
"Luck has nothing to do with it, in these conditions if it was testing I wouldn't have gone out, I would have waited for it to dry, but it's also true that the problem is that they were right in the trajectories. That's why I think the race direction after seeing 14 riders end up on the ground should have brought out the red flag for the track."

The Aprilia is competitive in both dry and wet conditions, but in the mixed conditions it was a difficult qualifying session.
"We've never lapped in these conditions, it's something we need to work on. Even though I was the first Aprilia is not enough, I really lost too much to our rivals. In my opinion, the decision to go out first with the averages was right, but then we switched to the softs, but in both cases it wouldn't have changed much, the feeling was the same."

According to some riders, the track conditions worsened during the race.
"For me Turn 5 definitely got worse than the first laps, it was really strange. Unfortunately once on the bike we can't communicate in any way, we talked about it several times in the safety commission, something to warn the race direction that the track is dangerous would help maybe."

Aleix: Capirossi told me they had tried to dry Turn 5 but there had been no time

Of the same opinion was Aleix Espargarò, who after also falling in the early stages of the race, pointed the finger at the race direction decisions, also pointing out the inconsistency of the penalties to the riders.

"I don't think the red flag was the solution," Aleix later explained, " if the track doesn't get worse for some reason it doesn't make sense. If you start you race. The real question should have been whether to do it or not, but it's hard for the riders to agree on that."

Were you aware of the track conditions?
"I had talked to Capirossi this morning and he had told me that they had tried to dry Turns 2 and 5 before the sessions but didn't have enough time . In my opinion it's dangerous to go out in these conditions with these bikes, but I understand that it's also difficult for race management. How do you control that rider who decides not to use dry tires in Q2? Even after the race, what could you say to Loris? Last year I took pole with slicks in the wet. They can just tell you 'if it's wet use wet tires,' so the issue is not simple. The track didn't get worse, the crashes happened in the same spots, no new slicks came out during the race."

The adverse weather made qualifying difficult for the Aprilia.
"We made a team strategy mistake, we used the wrong tires from the start by entering on medium, the opposite of our rivals, the feeling was bad and we panicked and switched to soft, then the track conditions improved and everyone switched to medium. It was a wrong strategy, the bike had nothing to do with it."

Many contacts were also seen in the race, Mir complained about the inconsistency of the penalties.
"I totally agree, it's not the first time. The rules for penalties need to be clearer, what do you get a long lap for, what do you have to leave a position for? If you take a rider out of line and you have to give up a position, then it must always be like that."

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