Vinales doesn’t blame Marquez for Mugello MotoGP Q1 exit

Marquez followed Vinales on both of their runs in the first 15-minute qualifying session at Mugello on Saturday afternoon, with the Yamaha rider visibly frustrated by Marquez deliberately stalking him to use as a reference.

The Honda rider would go through to Q2 while Vinales will have to start Sunday’s 23-lap Italian GP from 13th.

However, Vinales does not blame Marquez’s tactics on his Q1 exit, instead admitting he was “not fast enough”.

“I don’t have any comment on that, honestly,” Vinales said when asked about Marquez’s tactics in Q1.

“Just we were not fast enough. Honestly, after FP1 I never had a gain the feeling, we just go backwards instead of forwards.

“So, no excuses, we were slow and that’s it.

"I was concentrated enough. I make a good lap, just not enough.

“I just make a nice lap, but then. [I was] not disturbed, I knew what was behind, but I also knew doing a good lap I was able to go to Q2.

Maverick Vinales, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“Just, I wasn’t fast enough. So, he didn’t disturb me.

“He played his cards really well and that’s it. Tomorrow is another day.”

Yamaha boss Massimo Meregalli called Marquez’s tactics “not fair” and hoped Race Direction would look at the incident.

Vinales looked to make a mistake on his final lap in Q1 while on an effort that the timing screens showed as being good enough to get him into Q2.

However, Vinales says he deliberately aborted the lap as his Yamaha’s dashboard showed him he wasn’t set to improve.

“I just slowed down,” he added.

“I had a very bad sector three and I just slowed down. In sector four I lost 0.3s. You can check.

“I was sure that I was slower than the previous lap, so basically I just went out [wide] to prepare another lap, but yeah [I ran out of time].”