By the time a light rain shower arrived at 2pm, the pair were fourth (Vinales)♒ and fifth (Espargaro) on 🔯the timesheets, behind only the Ducatis of Jorge Martin, Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini.

With sunshine returning, the RS-GP riders will be ba🍰ck out to continue their work for the final hours of Friday.

"We concentrated a lot on [comparing] the old bike and new bike, and I feel [the new bike is] bꦺetter than last year’s bike,” said Vinales.

“So w🔯e used it straight away. Trying to do laps, understanding. Everything is more positive [with the new bike]. There isn’t anything negativ♊e which is a good sign for the first day.

“Braking♑ is similar, but I like how the bike corners,” Vinales added. “I feel better. I feel the bike is more light for changing direction. And then top speed I don't know because we didn't check. ඣIt’s very hard to understand if 2-3 ks while you are riding!

“But overall, I feel💯 I can ride much more naturally, which is really good. That's why I'm happy because straight away the feeling was very good.”

Vinales also has more aero updates to try.

“Still ཧwe have a lot of things for the aerodynamics, but we wanted to understand if the [new] bike was better or not. Now we understand, we want to work during the afternoon…”

Aleix: New bike looks good, we’ll see if it’s good enough

Espargaro echoed his team♉-mate’s positive first impression but with the c𒈔aveat that bigger changes might be needed.

“Th☂is winter I changed a bit my training, I didn't train with a superbike, and I felt good to be back on the bike immediately,” Espargaro began.

🐼“In the last part of the morning, I tried the '23 bike. It looks good. They changed a lot of small things around the bike. We still have a lot of time in front of us, we'll see if it's competitive enough, but it looks quite 𓆉good.

“A lot of small things,” are better, Espargaro confirmed: “For examp꧃le, the last t𝔉ime we were here in Malaysia, the bike was super hot everywhere. It burned all my body, so they changed a lot the cooling of the bike.

“We still have to try a lot of new items in ⛎aerodynamics. Some we are going to try here, some others we are going to try in Portimão. The power is slightly better. The stability, the turning looks a little bit better.

“I wa🍸ওs expecting maybe a little bit bigger changes, but we still have two days, so many things to try.”

When asked about engine specifications, as Aprilia prepares for its first full s🎀eason without technical concessions, the factory's MotoGP race w🥀inner replied:

“It's a bit complicated. But let's say that I have one full 2023 bike. It's not the final one, they told me that the ra🌌cing engines are going to upgrade a little bit more, because I was expecting a li🔯ttle bit more power. But it's still early.

“The 2022 bike I did three laps and it was enough [to know the 2023 is better]🔜. But sincerely, [the 2023] is not a revolution, ꧃it's basically very similar.

“So we focused on the 2023. We have one hybrid, and we 🦩have one full '23, so we can work with these two bikes, and I put the 2ඣ022 to one side. But the difference is not huge.”

Sprint race fuel tank

Wi👍th half-length Sprint races introduced on Saturday afternoon’s this season, Espargaro confirmed that Aprilia will have a revised fuel tan𓃲k available to keep the fuel in the optimum position, just as for qualifying.

“We already had a time attack fu👍el tank with just 5kg, which we used in qualifying,” Espargaro said. “We have also the option on our race fuel tank to just use half of the fuel tank.

“The Sprint race💮 fuel tank we are going to put the fuel on one side [part]. It's more for the mechanics, for the engineers to w♛ork differently. But for me, I don't think it will change much.”