Alex Rins: Fernandez “super fast” on Yamaha V4, but Turn 11…

Alex Rins, who quipped “I hope he finishes in front of us!” when discussing Augusto Fernandez’s Yamaha V4 debut at Misano this weekend, got his wish during Friday practice.

Riding the current Inline-powered M1, Monster Yamaha rider Rins finished directly behind the wild-card, in 20th place.

On a day that ended without any Yamaha riders claiming direct access to Qualifying 2 - Fabio Quartararo being best of the M1s in twelfth - Fernandez’s lap times provided the main positives.

“I mean, he went super fast,” agreed Rins, “and I was checking a bit of data and in corner 11, he's losing three tenths...

“So for sure, his lap time was super nice, super good for a bike that jumps into a GP weekend for the first time.”

Pressed on why Fernandez, who was only 1.2s behind Marc Marquez and 0.6s from Quartararo, lost so much time in the ultra-fast Curvone turn, Rins suggested that the Spaniard was being ‘careful’ with the new machinery:

“I don't want to say that he doesn’t have enough balls to do corner 11! But trust me, during the test, Fabio was giving me 0.2s in corner 11, and today we were doing at the same level… It's not easy, that corner!”

Rins wasn’t the only Yamaha rider behind the V4 with Pramac’s Miguel Oliveira in 22nd.

“In the time attack I was missing around 0.2 because I found many yellow flags,” said Rins. “But even improving by these two tenths we were out of Qualifying 2 anyway.”

He also echoed Quartararo’s words about struggling to extract performance from fresh rubber.

“It was quite surprising for us when we fit the soft we couldn't take everything from the soft tyre because it was really unstable,” said Rins.

“Many moments, we were losing a lot the rear - in Corner 3, Corner 8, the bike was ‘bubbling’ a lot. So yeah, a lot of room to improve from the bike.

“It was not an easy day for us, all the Yamahas out of Qualifying 2. Let's see how it goes.”

Jack Miller finished between Quartararo and Fernandez, in 16th.