P1 for Maverick Vinales as Yamaha look in ominous form

With one day left of MotoGP testing before the season officially begins on March 28, Maverick Vinales led a Yamaha top three with a time of 1m 53.244s. 

After Jack Miller and Fabio Quartararo went under the official lap record on day three set by Marc Marquez in 2019, it was the turn of Vinales to also complete that feat. 

Yamaha have impressed in both one lap time attacks and the race pace over the last two days. In between race runs, Vinales was once again seen practising his starts at the end of pitlane as this remains the biggest challenge. 

Vinales said: "Well at the moment we are trying to improve. For sure it's something difficult and we also need to mechanically improve the clutch, not just the way of the start process. So we are trying many things."

While Qatar is not a preferred testing venue for many riders, it does provide the chance to work on low grip performance due to the changing afternoon and night conditions.

Asked about this, the 26 year-old added: "We'll see. We are working very hard in that area. For sure you never know until there is no grip, so this is the difficult point.

"But we are working pretty hard and we hope that when there is no grip, we could use the chassis more and also use the corner speed to avoid that problem. So we will see.

"We are very curious to see and to try without grip, because at the moment here we have a really good feeling. The lap time is coming very easy, and as you said, we'll see if we can do the same performance without grip, and to be on the top also."

Vinales also tried out some long run performance with used tyres in order to get an understanding of the conditions that could be replicated come the first race.

"Well, I think today we concentrated a lot on trying to ride with less grip for many laps, around 10 laps or so, which is always difficult because the track has an amazing grip.

"The grip level of the track is incredible, so it's very difficult to say that right now we are ready for a low-grip situation, because as you can see, all the lap times are super fast.

"But anyway, I feel good with the bike which is the most important, and also I feel the last laps of the tyre is always good.

"So we will see, for sure in the race the conditions it will be different. But we keep positive because we think the bike is ready, and this is the most important."