Riding style changes give Vinales compromise

Maverick Vinales says tweaks to his riding style on the Movistar Yamaha are acting as a balance to its current acceleration weakness as he secured back-to-back podiums for the first time in over a year.

The Spanish rider suffered a familiar early race struggle for grip and pace, dropping to eighth on lap nine, but battled through the front group to take third place from Pramac Ducati’s Danilo Petrucci at the start of the penultimate lap.

While looking to tweak his riding style which helped him grab back-to-back rostrums for the first time since Le Mans and Mugello from last year, Vinales accepts it is acting as a compromise against Yamaha’s struggles under acceleration which is blamed on the lack of electronics control.

“It is good to have a little bit more consistency in results but I think here being on the podium at Sachsenring, as last year we suffered a lot, this year seems to be much better so I think with the bike we’ve improve quite a lot but there are still steps to do,” Vinales said.

“It went really well for the last 10-15 laps but I expected to be at the front trying to battle.

“It is time to work and try to become even stronger and I think at the moment we are recovering this feeling that I can be fast at the end so I need to improve my riding style to be fast at the beginning.

“We found a really good balance and I think our bike is really competitive on the chassis side but we need to improve the electronics.

“I think today in my race I lost opportunities on the main straight as I could not overtake.

“I think we are doing steps and I am concentrating on my riding style and trying to supply a little bit of what we do not have with the electronics and I think we did it well but still there is a lot of room to improve.”

Yamaha is expected to deliver its highly-sought electronics updates at the post-race test at Brno next month. The Czech Republic circuit hosts the first race after the summer break with MotoGP taking a shorter three-week pause this year due to the extra race on the 2018 calendar.