A tough Qualifying around the Autódromo Internacional de Goiânia left Viñales and Enea Bastianini down the grid for the 15-lap Sprint. While the pair dug deep once racing got underway, they were ultimately unable to trouble the points-scorers.

Qualifying
A busy FP2 on a dry track yielded the seventh-best lap for Viñales, while Bastianini slotted into 16th, just 0.3sec further back. The Tech3 duo then headed into the 15-minute Q1 shootout, which promised to be fiercely fought with five of the top ten riders from the 2026 MotoGP™ World Championship standings taking to the track.

On his KTM RC16, Spain’s Viñales initially bolted on Michelin’s soft compound rubber front and rear, before switching to a hard front tyre for his second run. As the clock ticked down, the former Moto3 World Champion posted his quickest effort, 0.768s shy of the benchmark, in a tightly contested session to secure 20th on the grid.

Bastianini again lapped just over three tenths adrift of his Tech3 team-mate, leaving the Italian to start the Sprint race from 22nd.

Sprint
Delays due to track repairs meant the Sprint got underway over an hour later than originally planned. Viñales initially dropped to the back of the pack but swiftly got his elbows out to recover his grid position as he focused on moving forward. 

Several incisive passes – allied to crashes for Joan Mir and Johann Zarco – elevated ‘Top Gun’ to 16th, as he consistently rivalled the front-runners for pace. Unfortunately, his momentum came to a stop when he fell at Turn Four with a third of the race length to go.

Bastianini executed a lightning launch to leapfrog six places over the course of the opening lap, before advancing to 15th next time round. Settling into a close midfield scrap, ‘The Beast’ subsequently conceded some ground in the heat of battle before recovering a couple of spots to take the chequered flag in 17th.

Red Bull KTM Tech3 will return to the track tomorrow (Sunday) for the weekend’s main event – the 31-lap Grand Prix of Brazil, set to get underway at 18:00 local time (UTC-3) - when Viñales and Bastianini will bid to battle their way into the points-paying positions.

Maverick Viñales: “I’m quite happy, to be honest, because at least I could ride the bike quickly today. That’s a real positive after Thailand, and I’m focusing more on the feeling than the result. I just need to build up my confidence on the bike again, because I currently don’t feel comfortable riding it. We don’t have enough grip in the corners, and I’m nearly all the time on the ground, and when you try to push a little bit over, you crash like I did in the Sprint. I don’t think it’s just down to set-up; it’s something bigger and we need to understand what that is, so now is the time to work even harder.”

Enea Bastianini: “Yesterday was a very difficult day – I really struggled to get enough temperature into the front tyre. Today felt much better – also because the conditions were better – but the lap time still wasn’t coming. In the race, the grip level was very low, and I made too many mistakes, particularly in Turn One. I’ve been trying to modify many things, since I’m clearly not satisfied with just challenging for points. We need to do something bigger, because I want to be fighting for more than that.”

Nicolas Goyon, Team Mananger: “It’s been a tough start for us in Brazil. It seems both of our riders are struggling for confidence on the bike, especially over a single lap, and that made for a disappointing Qualifying.
“Enea had a good start in the Sprint, but unfortunately dropped some positions, while Maverick struggled at the beginning of the race but then picked up the pace – at one point setting the quickest time of the KTM riders before he crashed which gives us some hope. Still, we clearly must improve our package if we want to be competitive in the main race tomorrow. We will continue to work hard, and we hope Sunday will bring us a better result.”