Maverick Viñales got his finale race weekend for Suzuki off to a flying start as he put in a very strong showing at the Gran Prix de la Comunitat Valenciana in Spain, finishing third fastest overall on the opening day.
In the rather cool opening morning session that only saw the track registering 12 Degrees, Viñales finished sixth overall with a best time of 1'31.926. However, as track temperatures rose to 27 Degrees in the afternoon's FP2, his times improved to set a 1'30.775.
The Spaniard spent both sessions testing a variety of settings, including different electronics configurations, and he is looking forward to finishing 2016 on a positive note.
“Today I felt really good with the bike and third place is a good result for the first day,” Vinales said. “We are already lapping with a strong pace also this is a good feeling. We are proving that our performance is getting to the top, we consistently improve and we are consistently within the top riders.”
“We still have some fine-tuning that can be applied. The Valencia circuit is very different from the Malaysian one where we were for the last race: Here the layout is a lot tighter and with tight corners, where the machine needs to be quick in turning and acceleration. We still need to find a better efficiency on this, as our machine prefers fast and smooth corners, but we have room for improvement, and we are also already within the fastest.”
