Maverick Vinales cuts Valencia MotoGP short to focus on 2026: «It was quite smart»

After a season complicated by injury, Maverick Vinales is ready to give what he can to KTM’s early preseason testing effort for the 2026 MotoGP campaign.

Vinales made his return to racing at the 2025 finale in Valencia, after missing several races in the second half of the year following the shoulder injury he sustained before the summer break in Germany.

Vinales retired from the race before the finish, cutting his Valencia Grand Prix short when he felt his physical condition was getting too weak, with an eye to Tuesday’s test.

“I had a good motivation seeing the guys in front, I was catching little-by-little to Enea [Bastianini],” Maverick Vinales said of his Valencia MotoGP.

“I was trying, trying, but at a certain moment I started to do mistakes because my arm was tired, I was going late on change of direction, going wide, going to the part of the track that there is no grip. 

“I said ‘There is no meaning to risk if the important thing right now is to look forward to next year’. 

“I think it was quite smart from my side to not keep pushing and doing mistakes that can cause a crash, especially in all left corners.”

Vinales expects that he will be able to ride in Tuesday’s test, but will need to be cautious with his run plan.

“If I do runs of four laps, it’s not a problem,” he said.

“I think my trouble starts when I do eight, nine, 10 laps in a row. If I do short runs, it will be okay and for me I will have all the test complete.”

He expects that even these short runs will be enough to do a good job for KTM, though.

“We want to do it really simple, to be honest,” he said.

“I think one of the methods I want to have for next year is to do a simple work. 

“So, we’re going to test the important things in the good hours, trying to understand if the direction of next year is the correct one, even though I think in only one track it’s very hard to say. 

“But to see where we go, this is very important to understand. 

“So, my target on Tuesday is to give a good direction, give good comments, test well, and then start my proper recovery for next year.”

In terms of the development itself, Vinales is clear about what needs to improve on the RC16: braking, and overall grip.

“Basically, what I would like for next year to improve is the deceleration as soon as I brake,” the Red Bull KTM Tech3 rider began.

“This is very important because for me it seems that we use a lot of rear tyre, sliding, sliding.

“From my experience, this is not the way, because then you overheat the tyres on the brakes and then you don’t have grip on the exit of the corner. 

“So, for me, my target is to try to make the bike more constant, that you can hit the same marks and then you can work on the riding style. 

“Now it’s not precise; one time you brake here, the bike slides, doesn’t slide, turns, not turns. So, I would like to have a bike that you can be precise. Then you work on it with the speed.

“So, a bike that is a little bit more stable and that is a little bit more sharp to find the grip on the edge of the tyres. Now, it’s very soft, like an icy feeling, sliding and then coming back.

“What I like is a bike that’s a bit more sharp, that I lean and then I catch the grip. So, let’s see if we can do a good job for that and I think this is really the way to go and to be competitive.

“We need to fight and if we are sliding all the time it’s hard to fight because it’s so easy to make a mistake, going wide here, one metre there. We need to be a little bit more precise.”

He added: “For me, it’s mechanical: how the bike is working, how the bike is loading the tyres. 

“I’m curious to test the new updates on the bike like Pedro [Acosta] and Brad [Binder] have now, to see if this is the direction or not. 

“But it seems that they make an improvement from the summer break. 

“My target is to be precise, this is important. If you are not precise, you cannot be fast, so I need to be very precise and especially brakes are important – I need to stop the bike well without sliding too much.”

Tomado de https://www.crash.net/rss/dakar