Valentino Rossi had a difficult relationship with Maverick Vinales' predecessor, Jorge Lorenzo, but he assured that he and his new teammate could do well.
Viñales repeated the sentiment, saying he hopes to maintain respect for Rossi, who had been his "idol" in his childhood.
"For now, the relationship is the same, we have a lot of respect for each other and I hope it stays that way," he said.
"When I was a kid, he was my idol and he still is. If we lose respect, it will not be good for me, not just on the media side or something, but because I saw him as an idol. Throughout our career as teammates. "
"It's important to Yamaha, you know. When you have a good relationship, you can develop the bike well, you can talk and that's good."
"I think the strong point last year was that Aleix and I were very close and we were improving the bike, and fast, because we were working together."
"And I think that this year we need to do this with Valentino, because it will not be easy to beat Marc [Márquez], and if we want to do that, we can not be fighting, we have to work a little together."
Adaptation of Lorenzo
Asked about the chances of Jorge Lorenzo in his new team, the Ducati, Viñales did not define the three-time MotoGP champion as a threat, suggesting that the Italian brand still needed to make big gains in certain areas.
"It's hard to know [about Lorenzo's chances]." First, we have to see how Lorenzo adapts to the bike, we did some tests and he was fast enough, so let's see. "
"We know that the Ducati has five or six tracks that go very well, even if they can not win, they're on the podium."
"But in other races, they suffer a lot. Let's see how Jorge adapts to the bike."
"I know that Jorge is an incredibly talented rider, it's fast, but we'll see how he can behave with Ducati on tracks like Jerez, Brno, Aragón, I remember it was very difficult for them."