Maverick Viñales started his quest at the 'Cathedral‘ with a full-on schedule on Friday. His first day at the TT Assen Circuit was filled with preparing his bikes' set-up and tyre allocation as well as trying the updated frame, and his hard work certainly  paid off..

Viñales had to show some patience in the FP1, as it was red flagged just three minutes into the session due to track conditions. Once the lights in pit lane turned green again at 10:29 local circuit time, the Spaniard headed out to get his Assen challenge well and truly underway.

He started his morning outing by comparing the updated frame to the original version before getting serious with his bike‘s setting. He soon found a good rhythm as he completed three five-lap stints on the Dutch circuit and set a best time of 1‘35.263s, which was fast enough to secure 12th place, 0.583s from first.

The youngster continued with a strong impression in the afternoon, setting the provisional fastest lap on his third attempt, and began to fine-tune his YZR-M1 to accommodate the Dutch circuit. He diligently worked on comparing the tyres, before he turned up the heat a notch on his final run.

He ended the session posting multiple 1'33s laps to top the FP2 and combined timesheets with a 1'33.130s and a 0.367s gap to his closest rival.

“Today‘s sessions were good,” he said. “We wanted to compare the tyres and do many laps, especially on the soft to see if they are good to last the whole race. Whether they have good potential I don‘t know yet, we have to see tomorrow. We will see in FP4, when we‘re going to be more hot, which spec will be a good tyre for the race.”

“I feel good, this is a track I like. The bike is working good and already from this morning we had a good set-up for this afternoon. We gained a lot of good information for tomorrow, especially for qualifying. We are trying and discussing the chassis, but as I always say: when we have grip, the bike is really nice to ride. Today it was easy to ride and control, and it was nice to feel good again.”