Team Suzuki Press Office – September 23.
Maverick Viñales – 6th.
Aleix Espargaró – 11th.
Team SUZUKI ECSTAR’s Maverick Viñales put in consistent laps in practice for this weekend’s Gran Premio Movistar de Aragón MotoGP™ at Motorland Aragon in Spain to secure sixth position as team mate Aleix Espargaró recovered from a slip-off to post 11th.
Both Viñales and Espargaró improved their lap-times aboard their GSX-RRs from the morning’s opening FP1 session, Viñales’ FP2 time of 1’48.886 is less-than half-a-second from Pole, while Espargaró’s time of 1’49.243 is 0.748 off the leader.
The day has been one of development for the riders and both crews busy in finding a good set-up for the bikes according to the variety of track situations. While the efficiency of the chassis is making the GSX-RRs very stable on fast corners, the handling in tighter corners and fast direction changes has still to be improved upon; the final issue only affecting Viñales, while Espargaró has been focusing more in finding better efficiency. The older Spaniard also incurred a crash, fortunately without injury, but the incident cost him valuable time in FP2.