Maverick Viñales has found that point that he missed since his stormy departure from Yamaha. It has taken him three years to feel like a winner in MotoGP again, but now he is chaining victories to the ‘sprint’ this 2024 and he looks more loose than ever. The Aprilia finally seems to adapt like a glove to the overflowing talent of the Roses rider, who with a new marvelous display emerged as the great protagonist of Saturday’s GP of the Americas. Unattainable within one lap, breaking the track record, being the first driver to go under 2:01 on this circuit, he paved the way to his new victory with the ‘pole position’.
“I’m dreaming, this is incredible. I want to thank the entire team, we certainly deserve it,” commented the Catalan after getting off the bike. The 29-year-old driver took off like a shot when the traffic light went out and in a couple of laps he had already escaped from his pursuers to end the race in the blink of an eye. It is not only the merit of the engineers at Noale, but the adaptation of driver and machine has gone in both directions. “In pre-season I was not on the new bike, and in Qatar I suffered, but in Portugal I understood where I should put the weight when braking and entering the curve.” A couple of details that have brought him back to the best version of him.
He left Marc Márquez and Jorge Martín behind, who completed a ‘made in USA’ podium with live music and twerking from the eight-time world champion. The ’93’, on one of his favorite circuits, where he has won seven races in nine participations, once again showed that he is getting closer to deciphering all the vicissitudes of the Ducati, very different from the Honda that he managed to tame here like no one else. . His exuberant celebration on the stage prepared by the organizers, before hundreds of spectators, proves how well accompanied he feels with his new family in the Gresini garage.
Both Márquez and Martín had to earn the podium by fighting to the limit with the great entertainer of this initial stretch of the course, Pedro Acosta who saw how the 93 overtook him at the start. The GasGas rookie, at 19 years old, once again gave a lively and brazen driving performance, making comparisons inevitable with that kid who revolutionized the discipline in 2013. The ‘Mazarrón Shark’ stuck to the rear wheel of the category totem, and on the sixth lap he took a bite out of the ant. The Catalan did not give up and returned the play immediately, then displaying his best skills and his incomparable judgment on this track to escape and close his second place in the short race, repeating his best result of the year in Portugal.
The 2023 runner-up, who had a bad qualifying with two falls in a row, came back from sixth place and took advantage of Acosta’s failed attack on Márquez to put the bike on the rookie and leave him in the lurch. Despite not taking the lead, the Murcian once again received praise from around the world. Second on the grid, his best classification in what is his fifth MotoGP race, the KTM group phenomenon was the best of the rest, once again a world away from his factory colleagues.
A poor start by Pecco Bagnaia, fourth on the grid and eighth at the finish line, in addition to the poor performance of Enea Bastianini, who occupies the seat that Martín covets in the official Ducati team, allowed the Pramac rider to extend his lead at the top of the table and send another strong message to the bosses of the Borgo Panigale brand. Sunday’s race (9:00 p.m., DAZN) once again promises a spectacle of
first after a Spanish repóker in the ‘sprint’ completed by the veteran Aleix Espargaró, who is meditating these days if he will choose to retire at the end of the course.
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