Jun 4th, 2016
Team Suzuki Press Office – June 4.
Team SUZUKI ECSTAR’s Maverick Viñales will start tomorrow’s Catalan MotoGP™ from the second-row of the grid after putting his GSX-RR into sixth position in this afternoon’s Q2, as team-mate Aleix Espargaró will start from row five after just missing-out on the final session to determine the front four-rows.
The track’s layout was modified today as a security measure to assure riders’ safety after yesterday’s crash, when Moto2 rider Luis Salom lost his life. The revised layout required Viñales and Espargaró extra effort to learn new lines and revise the machines’ set-up, but the day was hard for them also for the emotions they carried following their friend’s departure.
The first two sessions of the GP of Catalunya saw both Team SUZUKI ECSTAR riders work with various chassis options that were introduced last week in Valencia. The evolution chassis work done in the early part of the season has been useful for Suzuki’s R&D in Japan to consolidate a standard chassis that has been developed following feedback from both riders after the Winter tests. Following Valencia, however, the standard chassis configuration was developed further into two various directions; both of them preferred for different reasons by Viñales and Espargaró because of personal reasons and riding styles. These two evolution chassis were brought to Catalunya so that both riders had one bike equipped with the standard chassis and another with the new evolution chassis.
