Maverick Vinales says that a breakthrough in riding his Yamaha quickly early in the race while on full fuel at Mugello set him up for his first win of 2019.
Vinales defeated Marc Marquez in the closing laps of the Dutch TT by just under five seconds, scoring Yamaha’s first victory since last year’s Australian GP in October.
The Spaniard arguably looked to be the fastest man during the entirety of the 26 lap race, but struggled to make a move on Marquez with his slightly under-powered M1.
When he finally did make a move stick he quickly passed fellow Yamaha pilot Fabio Quartararo, and then attempted to sprint away.
A mistake a few laps later at Turn 1 allowed Marquez back into the lead, but he quickly re-passed the Honda and pulled away.
Vinales explained that a mental reset as well as his and Yamaha’s Mugello set-up break-through helped him to secure his sixth MotoGP win, closing to just seven points behind team-mate Valentino Rossi in the championship as a result.
“It’s so sweet,” started Vinales.
“After Montmelo it’s even sweeter because I thought the chance to win the race was in Montmelo because we were strong the whole weekend, particularly in the early laps, but winning in Assen is something unbelievable for me and also for the team.
“We’ve worked on everything, my mentality and with the bike to give me more confidence with the full tank, today it actually worked better with the full tank as I had so many moments in the last laps, and you could see Fabio’s too so it’s not the easiest bike to ride so it was tough.
“For some reason on Sunday’s we always struggle. Then in Mugello we found a way to make the bike behave similar to the whole weekend and that has allowed us to have more consistency, Yamaha did a great job and I’m really happy.”
Vinales went on to explain how he knew he had beaten Marquez once he had extended his advantage to over half-a-second, knowing the championship leader would have to risk crashing to match his blistering pace.
“I knew when I saw plus 0.5 on the board, I knew Marc would need to push so hard to keep up and wasn’t sure he had that pace so kept doing 33.7s so if he wanted to take me I knew he had to risk a lot.
“Since he’s fighting for the championship and not just this race I knew if I was hitting good lap-times it would be very difficult for him.
“Winning here in Assen is very special; it’s one of my favourite tracks so winning that race is something really nice.”
