Monster Yamaha riders Maverick Vinales and Valentino Rossi both narrowly missed out on a top te♏n place during opening free practice for the Austrian MotoGP.

With rain a threat throughout the weekend, all riders m꧑ade a late time atta🅰ck, which ended with Vinales eleventh (+0.586s from KTM's Pol Espargaro) and Rossi 13th (+0.686s) on the ultra-tight timesheets.

Coming off a frustrat⛎ing 14th place at Brno last Sunday, Vinales languished towards the lꦺower end of the results until his late push.

"The feeling here is pretty similar to what I had in Brno, we have the same probl🦋ems," revealed Vinales, who struggled badly for grip in the Czech race. "But anyway, this was just FP1, and we still have many laps to do on the track.

"Now it's in our hands to improve. I'm going to give my all to collect the best data, and then we will see. Anyway, on track I felt really strong. Concerning my riding style, I felt ♒that we're on point, and this is the most important thing.

"When we find the right sett💎ing, I think we wil▨l be there fighting at the front."

Like his team-mate, Rossi mus🅘t now hope that the rain stays away if he is tജo break into the top ten during this afternoon's FP2.

"It's difficult, because we weren't able to stay in the top 10 this mor🦂ning," the Italian admitted. "As always there are many different riders and bikes𓆏 that are very strong.

"We are close, we are n꧒ot so far, but we have to w💮ork and improve different points. We will see, and we hope that this afternoon we can have another dry practice session."

Vinales and ♈Rossi were both in the bott♔om four in terms of top speed this morning,

The high-speed natu🎀re of the Red Bull Ring means a special, harder rear tyre construction is in use this weekend.