Maverick Vinales feels he will be “certainly lot better” on the Aprilia MotoGP motorbike in 2022 than he was on the Yamaha at the same point last season.
In this season’s Portuguese Grand Prix, the nine-time MotoGP championship winner will compete in his tenth race for Aprilia, having switched to the brand midway through his difficult 2021 season after his partnership with Yamaha abruptly ended.
Vinales is presently 14th in the rankings, with 19 points and a highest result of 7th in Argentina, while colleague Aleix Espargaro led the Aprilia to triumph in the same race.
Despite no outstanding results so far in 2022, Vinales thinks he is “near” to being a leader on the Aprilia and feels much better than he experienced on the Yamaha after a season’s first half.
“Yeah, absolutely, I feel much better because the line we are taking is all going up,” he said, when asked by Motorsport.com if his form now was better than it was when he was winning races and scoring podiums on the Yamaha.
“It’s going up quicker than expected. I don’t always check the results. I check the feeling, I check laptimes.
“A weekend will come when we put it all together, this is clear. It’s a matter of time, a matter of especially how to get a little bit more with the bike because sometimes I fight a lot.
“In the previous races I fought a lot with the bike and I struggled to even push a little bit more.
“I’m just one step back from being able to fight for the top all the time.
“But it will come when I do [everything as] one on the bike. So, we just need to ride, adapt without pressure because at the end we have this year to develop the bike, to make myself comfortable.
“It’s clear that if we keep up the job we are doing, we will be at the front. But when I do that I want to be there all the weekends.”
Vinales hasn’t finished on the podium or triumphed in at any one of the first four races since 2016, but he claims he’s rarely felt better on a MotoGP bike than he performs currently on the Aprilia.
“Honestly, I never feel like I’m feeling now because I think I have just nine races with the Aprilia and I feel like everything is going up in a very quick speed,” he added.
“So, we need to just be patient, don’t lose the way because I think we are working very well.
“I have to say, after Mandalika warm-up, I found a good feeling on the bike and we just kept that feeling.
“So, it means we made a big step on the base set-up. Now it’s a case of trying new parts, seeing if it’s better or not, that’s it. We are very close.”
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