QUALIFYING 
Carrying on from Friday, the morning’s FP2 at the Grand Prix of Malaysia was full of promise as Bastianini set the fastest time in the MotoGP™ class as track temperatures began to rise. ‘La Bestia’ went on to qualify a highly competitive P7 in Q2, just under half a second shy of Alex Marquez’s pole time. Viñales was P12 in his first Q2 appearance of the year, another season best for ‘Top Gun’.

SPRINT 
Conditions were punishing ahead of the ten-lap Sprint, which kicked off at 15:00 MYT (UTC+8). Temperatures hit a stifling 36°C, while humidity stood at 51%.

The threatening rain clouds didn’t take long to arrive. Riders were shown the white flag on the second lap to indicate they could pit to change to their second bike fitted with wet tyres. The situation was complicated further when rain started to fall in Sector 2, even if it was not heavy enough to merit a switch to full wets.

Bastianini struggled with wheelie off the start line, which caused him to drop one position on the first lap. Gaining a place after Alex Marquez’s crash out of the lead, the Italian was soon engaged in an exciting fight for P5 with Pecco Bagnaia, Fabio Di Giannantonio and Johann Zarco.

But Bastianini found that rear grip wasn’t ideal while scrapping with Zarco, and the light shower didn’t help his hopes of a top-six finish as he dropped to P9 on the final lap. One positive is that he feels there is good potential to fight for the top five on Sunday if he can start well.

Meanwhile, Viñales lost two places on the first lap. The Spaniard, who is still recovering from a long-term shoulder injury, took the decision to gamble on a wet-weather bike at the end of lap seven. Unfortunately, the heavy rain only arrived moments after the chequered flag, meaning this time the bet didn’t pay off, and he ended the day in P15.

Tech3 is now eager to show more speed on Sunday. MotoGP kicks off an hour later than usual, with Warm Up taking place at 10:40 MYT (UTC+8), followed by the 20-lap race at 15:00 MYT (UTC+8).

Enea Bastianini: “Everything was a consequence of the start. I don’t know why but I can’t start very well at the moment. My release is good but after that I have some wheelie. I tried to find something with the team but we’re still looking for a solution. It will be important to sort this out for tomorrow because coming back here is really difficult and if you use the tyre on the first lap you lose everything. That’s what happened to me today. From the second lap I was drifting. I tried to stay there. In the middle of the race, it started raining a bit in Sector 2 and after that in Sector 1. I lost something to the others, and it was complicated coming back from that. We were competitive this morning and I was really close to the front in qualifying. I think we still have a good chance of doing a great race tomorrow.”

Maverick Viñales: “To be honest, in the Sprint I tried to get the rhythm and see how the bike was working for tomorrow. My plan was to stop, but I saw the bike was ready on wet and I said, okay, I go out. In the middle of the race, it started to rain quite a lot, but then for a while it stopped, which meant unfortunately the others didn’t have to come in to change their bikes, so my gamble didn’t pay off. After the chequered flag it started to rain like crazy. I want to save energy for tomorrow, because I need to recover to make the muscle grow and gain power. Tomorrow the target is to survive Malaysia and then move on to the next one."

Nicolas Goyon, Team Manager: “Well, obviously not the result we were all hoping for in this Sprint here in Sepang, especially after the bright Friday that we’ve had that saw both our riders qualify directly for Q2. So obviously we were hoping for a little bit more. This morning Enea qualified in P7, which is quite a decent position, but all through the race he didn’t have the feeling he was hoping for, and on top of that, the extra drops flying all through the race didn’t really help. To see Enea finishing the race two positions behind his qualifying means that something is not working in the right way. We have one night to understand what happened, and I’m sure tomorrow the team and Enea will manage to achieve the position we are all expecting.

“On the other side of the garage, we knew Maverick would suffer a little bit with the conditions. When the drops started to intensify, he was at the back of the field and decided to bet. He decided to pit in, hoping for more rain, and change the bike and start with a wet bike, but unfortunately the rain didn’t intensify and Maverick lost his bet. We start again from scratch tomorrow and we hope that we will get the result we deserve."