THE WEATHER COMPLICATES THINGS ON SATURDAY IN MUGELLO

THE MIXED CONDITIONS MAKE QUALIFYING A DEMANDING TASK: ALEIX TAKES A SPOT ON THE THIRD ROW, MAVERICK PREPARES FOR A COMEBACK RACE, LORENZO CONTINUES DEVELOPMENT WORK ON THE RS-GP

It was in the back of everyone’s mind from the start of the Tuscan weekend and today, just before qualifying, the rain arrived and threw a spanner in the works for teams and riders. The track was never entirely wet, but it wasn’t in the best conditions to be able to push in qualifying style either. Aleix, who had been fastest in the dry yesterday, decided to try two runs on a new tyre. In the second one, after doing some interesting times in the meantime, a mistake on the final sector kept him from doing better than seventh place. However, pace is on his side. In a dry race, no results are ruled out.

Having to pass through the Q1 selection after just missing going straight through in FP3, Maverick found himself having to push hard when the weather was the most unpredictable it had been all afternoon. With a less than perfect feeling not helping at all, Viñales missed the mark on choosing the right tyre and was unable to give it his best both with the rain tyre and with the slicks. This means that he’ll be facing a race coming from behind, which is not an impossible task given his outstanding pace.

Lorenzo Savadori continued his development work and he’ll be starting from the eighth row of the grid tomorrow.

ALEIX ESPARGARÓ
"These were difficult qualifiers, bordering on risky. I really wanted a good result today. In fact, toward the end of Q2 I decided to box and gamble on a new tyre. Unfortunately, a mistake in the final sector kept me from taking a spot on the second or maybe even first row, but the MotoGP youngsters took a few more risks and deserve to be out front. In any case, this does not change our goal for tomorrow, which is still to battle for the win here in Mugello."

MAVERICK VIÑALES
"Tomorrow we’ll once again have to come back from behind. Our pace is good and we demonstrated that again today. In FP3 we missed going straight through to qualifying by a few thousandths and then in Q1 I was lacking confidence in the mixed weather conditions. I'm hoping for a dry race. I'm confident that I can make up positions, especially if the pace isn’t exaggerated in the early laps."

LORENZO SAVADORI
"Unfortunately, I only managed to do one run with slicks in qualifying. Maybe with two attempts it would have been possible to improve a bit. Today we once again used the sessions to test other solutions and that is the most important thing. Now the goal is to try and have fun tomorrow in the race!"