Maverick Vinales says he will announce the details of his MotoGP suspension “as soon as he can” in a short Instagram post while trackside in Austria.
Vinales was suspended from competing in this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix by Yamaha after the Spaniard was found to have performed “unexplained irregular operation” with his M1 in the closing laps of last weekend’s Styrian GP, with reports in the past days suggesting he may have over-revved his machine in purpose to try and damage the engine.
Having completed his final four laps around five seconds slower than he should, reports from trackside suggested that he had hit the rev limiter of the M1 on several occasions before then doing so again on his in-lap to the pits after the flag.
Yamaha revealed they had suspended Vinales on Thursday afternoon after performing “in-depth analysis of telemetry and data over the last few days”, the nine-time premier class winner’s return to the organisation unlikely should Yamaha find him guilty.
Vinales surprisingly was seen trackside during FP1 donning full Yamaha uniform, the ’13 Moto3 world champion soon after posting an Instagram story in which he promised to reveal details from his side of the story “as soon as I can.”
Yamaha elected not to replace Vinales for the Austrian GP-leaving series leader Fabio Quartararo as its sole entrant for the event-with tester Cal Crutchlow and GRT World Superbike rider Garrett Gerloff-who is free from his WSBK duties and also competed with SRT on an M1 at Assen- the most likely pilots to replace Vinales at Silverstone in two weeks should he not return.
Vinales looks set to switch to Aprilia’s factory operation for next year after deciding to leave Yamaha prior to the Dutch TT in June, though it’s currently unknown whether the recent series of events could endanger any kind of deal with the Italian marque.
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