Vinales “expected to be at the front” in Qatar MotoGP

Vinales won the Qatar GP in 2021 when he rode for Yamaha and is twice a winner at the event.

After a strong pre-season on the 2022 Aprilia, Vinales has been off-colour all weekend at Losail and could do no better than 19th on the grid while team-mate Aleix Espargaro was fifth – with almost a second splitting the pair.   

When asked by Autosport if he anticipated the Qatar weekend to be as difficult as it has been on the Aprilia, Vinales admits he didn’t but “cannot start crying” now.

“Honestly I didn’t expect it,” he said. “To be sure I didn’t expect it, honestly I expected to be at the front and much faster. 

“But it is what we have right now, so we cannot do nothing. We cannot start crying, we need to start working, it’s what we are doing.   

“Today we tried things that worked on the rhythm but not on the fast lap. So, tomorrow we will try other things, but we need to keep trying until we find a good set-up for us.”

Maverick Vinales, Aprilia Racing Team

Photo by: MotoGP

Expanding on the issues which led to his difficult qualifying, Vinales says it is still down to struggling with the front-end of the Aprilia.   

Vinales says the problem is “even bigger” than it was in pre-season testing and finding a fix is being complicated by the lack of track time available to him during a race weekend.   

“Honestly, on the test I was suffering with the front a lot,” he added. “And here it’s even bigger, so my problem comes from the front.   

“I lose the front all the time and I can’t push, especially with new tyres. With used tyres it becomes much better, but with new tyres I have a lot of problems.   

“We need to try, and in a race weekend you cannot try every run, you only have 40 minutes. So, at the end of the day we cannot