Maverick Viñales – 3rd / Series Ranking 4th
Aleix Espargaró – NC / Series Ranking 11th

Maverick Viñales raced to a sensational hard-fought third place in today’s Michelin® Australian Motorcycle GP after an exciting recovery from 13th place on the grid and a hard-fought battle with team mate Aleix Espargaró, who unfortunately slipped-off from his provisional third position with just five laps remaining.

Both Team SUZUKI ECSTAR riders were on podium pace from the morning’s warm-up, held in bright and dry conditions at Phillip Island, for the first time all weekend. And on the start, both GSX-RRs got great jumps with both riders immediately in the hunt.

Espargaró moved from fourth to third and Viñales started his climb through the pack that saw him catch-up from a lowly 13th on the grid, to challenge for the podium with nine laps remaining.

The young Spaniard traded places with his team-mate and Andrea Dovizioso in the race’s most exciting battle until Espargaró lost the front end after re-passing for third position in the closing stages; putting Viñales in line for his second successive podium in two weeks; his previous one being at Motegi in Japan.

Ken Kawauchi – Technical Manager:

“This weekend has been very difficult, as the weather was totally unstable and made our job very hard. Only this morning we had 30 minutes in totally dry conditions, and it was all the time we had to try to find proper set-ups before the race. These hard conditions also made Maverick to jump from 13th place, but he could pull-off many overtakes and finally got the podium; with this he did a super job and we’re very proud of him. Also, Aleix had an extraordinary weekend, he managed to exploit the hard conditions to his best and performed very competitively for the whole race, consistently fighting for the podium. Unfortunately, he crashed and this is a huge pity because he was doing a very good job. We will keep this positive feeling going to Malaysia, which will be the next race on next week and also the last one of this three-in-a-row fly-away rounds, as a further push to keep our performance at the top.”


Maverick Viñales:

“This podium has a very good taste to it, the weekend had been very hard this morning, but finally I was happy when I woke up today and saw the sun. We had very little time to finalise a set-up for the race, but finally the machine was very good to me and the tyre choice proved to be the right one, allowing me to recover and go for the third. I only had to be careful in the very early stages of the race because not having had the time to test the tyres I was not totally sure the front would support me, but after two or three laps I realised I could trust it. My pace was very good, I’m sorry for Aleix’s crash because we were having a strong race and we had a good pace. At the end, I also thought I could catch-up for second place, my pace was good enough to do it, but unfortunately I’d lost too much time in getting from sixth to third and the race was gone. Anyway, I’m really happy with the result, I want to thank my team because they did a very good job having such a short time to prepare.”

Aleix Espargaro:

“I’m really sad because once again, just like in Japan, we were fighting for the podium until the last laps… it’s difficult because I felt I had the pace to catch-up for second, but I lost much time to keep my rhythm as I had to recover from overtakings on the straight. After the warm-up we took a gamble, going with the hard tyre at the front without having tried it properly in the warm-up, but also the team did a very good job improving the machine a lot for the race. I’m sorry also for them, I hope we will come strong again in Malaysia to be competitive again. We proved we can be a lot more competitive recently, so we will work to keep this positive performance.”



MICHELIN® AUSTRALIAN MOTORCYCLE GRAND PRIX RESULT:

1 Cal CRUTCHLOW - LCR Honda - 40'48.543 176.5
2 Valentino ROSSI - Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - 40'52.761 + 4.218
3 Maverick VIÑALES - Team SUZUKI ECSTAR - 40'53.852 + 5.309
4 Andrea DOVIZIOSO - Ducati Team - 40'57.700 + 9.157
5 Pol ESPARGARO - Monster Yamaha Tech 3 - 41'02.842 + 14.299
6 Jorge LORENZO - Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - 41'08.668 + 20.125
7 Scott REDDING - OCTO Pramac Yakhnich - 41'16.912 + 28.369
8 Bradley SMITH - Monster Yamaha Tech 3 - 41'17.324 + 28.781
9 Danilo PETRUCCI - OCTO Pramac Yakhnich - 41'17.335 + 28.792
10 Jack MILLER - Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS - 41'17.358 + 28.815
NC Aleix ESPARGARO - Team SUZUKI ECSTAR - 33'18.496 - 5 laps