While Aleix Espargaro was hoping to get on the podium at Silverstone, which he did on Saturday in the Sprint but had to settle for sixth place in the main race, things didn’t go well on the other side of the Aprilia garage.
After finishing eighth in Saturday’s Sprint, Maverick Vinales knew Sunday’s race would be tough. And so it was. The Spaniard faced an even more complicated race and not only failed to stay in the middle of the group, but ended up closing it, in 13th position, behind Jack Miller and ahead of Johann Zarco. That is to say, fighting with the Japanese brands at the bottom of the standings.
At the end of the day, the Catalan rider spoke to the media, including Motorsport.com, and lamented the great decline that the Noale team is experiencing, which resulted in problems from the first third of the race.
“We have to understand what is happening, what we are missing to go from winning races to suffering at the back of the pack,” Vinales began. “On this track, after the fifth lap, I had no rear tire left, it was destroyed. I lost two seconds in one go. We have to understand what we are not finding on the circuits where we should be the reference.”
Vinales chose to use the medium front tyre, unlike his teammate Espargaro, who used the hard, reiterating that the soft compound makes life difficult for the RS-GP. But beyond the tyres, the number 12 is concerned about the decline of Aprilia from one year to the next.
“I know we can do better, but this should worry the factory. They need to know how to get out of this situation. Here we lacked traction. We need to analyze the parts that are different on this bike, compared to last year, to understand what happened,” he said.
“Aprilia must react because in the last three or four races we have not reached the level that should be expected of us. I don’t think that Ducati has made a big step forward, but rather that we have taken a step back,” the Spaniard said emphatically.
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