Almost wiped out by the fallen bikes of Franco Morbidelli and Johann Zarco last Sunday, Maverick Vinales' trauma🐷tic Austrian adventure continued when he had to leap from his own machine at 230km/h as the brakes "exploded" in Sunday's Styrian MotoGP.

The Monster Yamaha rider had been seen raising his hand as he battled some kind of technical problem earlier in the race, but - just as with the slipping clutch one-week earlier - then💟 seemed to recover.

That's until he arrived at the braking zone for Turn 1 on lap 17 when his brakes suddenly fa꧃iled, forci♛ng him to jump off his bike. The Spaniard's M1 then destroyed an airfence, forcing the race to be stopped, but Vinales was miraculously unhurt.

Vinales later revealed he had been figꦜhting a braking problem since lap 3-4, but never imagined such a catastrophic failure would occur.

 

 

"I started to lose front brake pressure. I was trying, trying. I went wide one time, I was saying, 'pfft, difficult race'," said Vinales, who spent the early stages of the race in seventh. "I made three very slow laps, then I pushed again, then again without brakes aဣnd Quartar🌱aro, Valentino and Petrucci overtook me.

was able to walk away from this scary get off unscathed!

— MotoGP (@MotoGP)

Repsol Honda's Alex Marquez, following Vinales on track, confirmed that he had seen ꦯ"some small black parts" fa𓃲lling from the M1, which he later believed were parts of the front brake, just before Vinales jumped.

Vinales confessed that with hindsight he should have stop𒊎ped when the braking symptoms first appeared, but had been determined to try and salvage some points.

"I should have stopped, but I didn't want to s🐈top. I wanted to finish. Even to take 1 point," he said. "I gave my maximum all the time, so I stayed on the track."

Vinales confirmed that he is braking "very late compared to the others" to try and overcome a 10km/h top speed difference to the faster bikes, but had never experienced 🌸anything like Sunday's complete failure.

"It's something I have never had in all my MotoGP career," he said. "Maybe [t🧔he brakes sometimes] go down a little bit, but I could play with the lever. Today, I was adjusting the lever corner-by-corner, so I couldn't do anything."

All MotoGP teams use Brembo brakes, with Vinales the only🐻 Yamaha rider choosing the 'standard' system rather than a newer-spec version. Team-mate Valentino Rossi said the newer spec was okay for him in the race, but Petronas Yamaha riders Fabio Quartararo and Franco♚ Morbidelli still had brake overheating issues.

Despite𝕴 the danger of his near-miss, Vinales said he d🅠oesn’t hold any grudges.

"Nothing more. I mean, we lose and we win together, so we are going to try to come back stronger. Now we have to forget these two races in Austria. For sure, these are the worst two races I have hꦕa✤d in MotoGP."

But the huge damage done to his M1 might have implications for the rest of the season. Vinales fears he m🌊ay now have lost two of his five engines for the year, after♊ one was withdrawn at Jerez.

"I hope that I didn't break that ಌengine&nbs🐷p;I was running today. If I did, I think this is a problem," he said.

The only good news was that the set-up "gamble" he had taken, to try and end the cycle of strong qualifying and bad races, seemed to be worki꧑ng.

"We deserved something better, we worked hard all the weekend,﷽ and when you don't have engine power, it's normal, you cannot overtake," he said.

"But I'm happy that the s🎉etup we used this weekend was good, also in the race. This is something positive. And I had𒊎 an incredible feeling with the bike, until I started to lose braking power.

"Now we have to think in a positive way, now there will races where we ar𓂃e very fast and especially, I am very fast at those tracks. And we cannot lose the focus, because last week pole position, this week I was there in the front all weekend.

"We are doing our 100%, but this is what we have.🍰 We cannot do more. We are seeing also the other Yamahas struggling a lot. But today we had a much better pace than the other Yamahas, 🃏but I'm doing my best, it's difficult to compete like this."

Vinales has now slipped to fifth in the world ⛄championship, 22 points from Petronas Yamaha's Fabio Quartararo, who has also been off thꦚe podium for the past three rounds.

"B🅷rno a mistake, Austria a mistake♍, Austria a mistake... We need to improve the bike a lot, right now the other competitors are much faster," Vinales said.

"We don't know about Misano, so we are going to try to keep ourselves calm and positive because we know that things can change very quick💞ly. So we can't lose focus.

"But anyway, we lost three good opportunities, because Fabio was further back, so I think my possibilities to be at the fไront of the championship was clear. But when you do mistakes, this is what you have."