Maverick Vinales sees plenty of scope for improvement despite gaining 1.2 seconds on the second day of pre-season testing at Sepang. The Moto2 graduate climbed to fifteenth, closing the gap to his teammate Aleix Espargaro to half a second, and finishing the day as the leading rookie.
Despite the progress, the Spanish youngster is staying cautious and expects more improvements to come as he continues to learn.
“Today I attempted to try several different lines and also tried different riding styles to try to find which is the best and at the end of the session, I made a good lap, so I’m quite satisfied with the job done today. It’s rather important for me now to improve the lap times, and even step-by-step, I can feel that we are going in the right direction. I’m sure that I can improve a lot more if I have more laps and gain more experience; so I’m really keen to do as many laps as possible. We will try to make one long run tomorrow, but the primary plan is just like today; go step-by-step and target the best lap-time at the end of the day.”
Aleix Espargaro took Suzuki into the top ten for the first time this week and was particularly encouraged to have closed the gap to their rival manufacturers.
“I’m happy with the improvements made since yesterday as we closed half-a-second closer to the fast guys compared to the lap-times yesterday; which gives me great confidence that we are working in the right direction. We have a good set-up with the geometry of the bike and I’m getting more-used to being faster and more competitive with my new bike, so we are very happy and really looking forward tomorrow. We still need to work more with TC and rear-grip as these are the main issues right now, but I think that the time we did today was quite competitive.”