Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP rider Mavrick Vinlaes finished third after coming from the back of Repsol Honda rider Marc Marquez and Suzuki rider Alex Rins at British Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Spaniard admitted he suffered a lot on the straight and was slower compared to Marquez and Rins at the beginning of the race at Silverstone.
“Actually I’m a little bit in shock. Rins and Marquez say they controlled the fuel map, I was at full power for all the race, honestly. But we lost a lot on the straight. If we compare, it’s about 0.3s, 0.4s every lap. I have to push the bike at the maximum.” Vinales said.
“I started to catch them [Marquez and Rins] when they started to fight. If not, it would have been very difficult to do so because we were riding in the same way. I was alone, so I didn’t have the gain of the slipstream, which I thought I could get from the beginning and get closer to them. It’s like this.
“Somehow we are going in a good way with the bike, the chassis. We are improving in races, especially [ones] without grip. We play with the bike the best we can, I think we’ve taken the maximum and even more because we had laptimes that were very close to the top guys.
“The only point is to improve, to keep working also on myself to give a bit extra [in case] the bike doesn’t arrive at a top level.” Vinales added.
With a solid race pace, Vinales had duel it out at the beginning with team-mate Valentino Rossi and coming close enough to Rins and Marquez.
“With another Yamaha it’s not so difficult to overtake. I just arrived behind Valentino and I overtook.” Vinlaes said.
“But compared to the other bikes with a little bit less corner speed and more top speed, you lose this 20 metres and it’s very difficult to overtake. We are lucky here to have more parts of the track to overtake, not only hard braking zones.” Vinales added.
