Monster Energy Yamaha factory MotoGP rider Maverick Vinales was left encouraged after the opening day of free practice, which saw him finish second fastest to Marc Marquez at the Red Bull Ring in Austria.
After finishing third in the morning session, Vinales went one better in the afternoon, finishing second fastest over the two combined sessions, just 0.066 behind the World Championship leader.
After a disappointing last weekend in Brno, Vinales was encouraged by how his factory M1 felt through free practice.
“The feeling has been quite positive,” said the Spaniard.
“We’ve been working a lot on the bike, trying to understand in which direction we should go. I think we might have found something good to better my rhythm, but we still have to improve.
“We just missed out on first place, but I’m feeling positive. Being second in FP2 here is really good for us, this is a track where we suffer a lot. This year it seems to be going better, so we are in a good way and will try to keep improving things tomorrow.”
When asked what his plan was for qualifying, Vinales said: “We’re going to try to be on the first row and then we’ll see.
“Today we tried the tyres and we have more or less some ideas for tomorrow, so we’re going to be working very hard.”
