Maverick Vinales says the Austrian MotoGP highlighted braking issues Aprilia must solve, after struggling to a distant seventh and an "unacceptable" deficit to🍌 its rivals.

The Red Bull Ring is one of Aprilia’s weakest circuits as its stop-and-go la🌼yo🤪ut works against the RS-GP’s strengths in high-speed corners.

As has been the case rece🎶ntly, Aprilia showed strong form in the sprint, with Aleix Espargaro coming third after Marౠc Marquez crashed out of second late on.

But in the grand prix, Vinales was 24.322s behind race winner Francesco Bagna🦩ia in seventh, with Espargaro losing eighth late on to Franco Morbidelli.

After sounding the alarm bells at the British GP, particularly over tyre degradatio🍨n, Vinales has identified braking as a key area for Aprilia to work on.

“We are understanding what we need,” he said.

“Basically, it’s on brakes. I think what we understand and what I feel⭕ is that we are not loading the front tyre well.

“So, we are not taking out the maxim෴um performance of the fron✤t tyre.

“Somehow it gives you a bad feeling, especially through the race ꧟when everything gets hotter and the pressure goes up. So, it will be important in Aragon to work on that.”

He added: “It was a defensive race. 🍃I tried to sque♋eze out as much as possible. On this circuit, in particular, I struggle with braking.

“It was hard to stop the bike. To b꧒e honest, I think it is a good result and I earned important points anyway.

൲“There are some areas where the bike was very strong and we know that there are thi🦩ngs we need to improve, like braking.”

Aprilia CEO Massiꦗmo Rivola says the team “collected some important data to analyse” in Austria, but slammed the gap to its rivals.

“We confirmed on🧸ce again that we are co🐼mpetitive in qualifying and in the sprint race,” he said.

“Unfortunatel🦄y, yet agai🗹n in the long race, when the distance increases, tyre degradation arrives and we lose competitiveness.

“We knew that this was not one of the most favourable tracks for our 🎃bike, but we also encountered some excessive temperature issues.

“We c🔯ertainly collected some important data to analyse in order to improve. All we can do is keep working, because the gap behind the others in the race is unacceptable.”