Maverick Vinales admits he doesn't have much confidence in his KTM MotoGP bike after returning to riding on Friday at the Japanese Grand Prix. The Tech3 rider has been out of action since the summer break due to an ongoing shoulder injury, but is staging his comeback this weekend at Motegi.
In FP1, Vinales was 18th with a time of 1m45.515s, before improving to a 1m44.836s in Practice, albeit 2.025s off the pace in last position.
“Not the best track to come back to, to be honest [with] massive hard brakings,” he told the media on Friday afternoon. “But, there is a point to start and I think now the most important thing is to focus on the job and focus on improving with the bike.”
Vinales added that he is completely out of the feelings the bike is giving him to really adapt to what the bike needs to go fast. “What I can feel from a long time is that I have no flow with the bike. So, there is not much confidence. So this needs to be step by step, but we knew that and the objective for this weekend is to finish the race,” he explained.
Despite that, his physical condition is quite good. He expected to struggle more, especially with the forearms. “The body is quite good. I expected to struggle more, especially with the forearms. But it’s not so bad. So, I’m quite optimistic. There is work to do, for sure, but quite good; even if Japan is one of the toughest, it’s quite OK,” he added.
Interestingly, Vinales notes that the KTM turns better than he remembers, but he’s currently coming into the corners too quickly to take profit. “For me, it’s doing laps, doing set-ups, trying to understand from the team what I need. And step by step building up. I need to adapt to the bike, but at the same time the bike needs to adapt to what I’m asking for,” he said.
He also acknowledges that his teammate, Pedro Acosta, is at the front, and Enea Bastianini is also fast today. “So, the bike is working. It’s just a matter of doing a good job. Somehow it looks like it’s turning a little bit more. But I enter really quickly into the corners; I try to stop the bike but I can’t at the moment. So, I need to learn how to stop the bike. It's something I learned last year, because I started the year struggling, and I learned. But this bike, it seems like you need one specific balance to stop it and turn. So, I need to get it. It needs laps and laps,” he concluded.
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