MotoGP: Progress from Valencia test set to help Suzuki in Catalunya

The factory Suzuki pairing of Maverick Viñales and Aleix Espargaró are looking towards an improvement in form this weekend in Catalunya, after a successful test for the pair during the break since Mugello.

Taking to Valencia for two days this week, Viñales says that with both more time on the bike and with new parts form Japan, they’re expecting an improvement from the results last time out.

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“The race in Mugello was not as good as I expected, and I am happy we’ll soon get to racing again to find more performance. Last week we had two very positive days in Valencia and I found a good feeling, as the Suzuki Factory sent us some developments that will hopefully help me with the bike set-up.

“We are improving day-by-day and race-by-race, this is very important, and I really hope to have a good weekend in Catalunya. It will be my home race, I was born in the region and grew-up there, so there will be many of my friends and also a lot of people from my Fan Club, which will be a further incentive for me.”

Teammate Espargaró has even more incentive than new parts to perform this weekend, though, with the race at Barcelona’s Montmelò circuit taking place only minutes from where he grew up.

“Racing in Barcelona is always magic; I was born and grew-up very close to the circuit, and when I was a kid at school, I could hear the sound of engines while I was in class, so this again will be an emotional race for me.

“Lately we have been finding very positive set-ups and my competitiveness has increased a lot. The two days testing in Valencia gave us further options we will investigate more in Barcelona, but the overall feeling is good and I have the confidence that we can improve even more.

“The bike has also improved a lot since last year and we should suffer less with acceleration problems we had in 2015 as our engine is now performing much better.”