Qualifying
Fresh from his best Friday of the year, Bastianini had high hopes for qualifying at his home race. Having made changes to his set-up to give him greater rear-end feel, the 28-year-old was able to go faster than the previous day.

Despite lowering his personal best lap time of the weekend by 0.048s in Q2, ‘Bestia’ could place no higher than eleventh in a highly competitive session, which saw the outright lap record smashed by 0.24s.

In his second round since returning from corrective shoulder surgery, Viñales continued to build up strength around one of MotoGP™’s most physically demanding layouts. He was unable to get out of Q1 and set the 19^th quickest time of the morning.

Sprint
Track temperatures had risen to 49 degrees Celsius – the hottest of the weekend so far – come the afternoon’s Sprint, making conditions tricky in the early laps. Launching from 17^th, Viñales enjoyed a steady getaway and held position on the first lap.

‘Top Gun’ was soon involved in an exciting scrap with Fabio Quartararo and after crashes for other riders ahead, he gained two places over the next ten laps even if he finished just 0.05s back of the Yamaha rider.

Bastianini enjoyed a brilliant launch off the grid and cleverly chose his line on the inside of Turn 1 to gain three places. Sat just behind Fermin Aldeguer on lap two, the Italian made a superb pass on Pedro Acosta starting the second lap and plotted his further moves ahead.

Bastianini’s Sprint came to an unfortunate end midway through the fifth lap as he tucked the front at Turn 10 while defending eighth position.

Red Bull KTM Tech3 will be back tomorrow for the main event of the Grand Prix of Italy, which will kick off at 14:00 (UTC+2) for 23 high-speed laps as the #23 and #12 bikes push to climb the order.

Maverick Viñales: “Today was more complicated than yesterday and we lost some performance, probably due to the conditions. But I was able to push more and start to understand the bike better. We still need to improve the rear grip and stability, especially on corner entry and mid-corner, where I’m losing time.

"Physically, I’m feeling okay - the shoulder is improving, even if direction changes are still demanding. It’s part of the process. But overall, it’s good training and I was able to keep a consistent rhythm in the Sprint.”

Enea Bastianini: “Even before the crash, I was struggling with turning into the corners and couldn’t match the corner speed of the others. Yesterday we were competitive, but today we stayed at the same level while others improved, which made things very difficult.

"I made a mistake pushing hard at my home race because I wanted a strong result. The bike feels nervous, although braking is still our strong point. We need to better understand the front tyre and try to improve for tomorrow.”

Nicolas Goyon, Team Manager: “After Enea's strong result yesterday we expected to be more competitive today but could only secure P11 in Q2. In the Sprint, we hoped to recover, but the bike didn’t perform well in these conditions, and we ended with a DNF. On Maverick’s side, he is continuing to recover and already feels better than in Barcelona. This is a very demanding track, so it’s normal he’s still not at 100%, but there are encouraging signs, and we expect further progress.”