The Aragon MotoGP winner who shouldn't have been doubted

MotoGP celebrated its eighth different winner in 10 races in 2020 in Sunday's Aragon Grand Prix. To put this into some kind of perspective, Formula 1 has had eight different winners since 2018. It's also the second time in five years so many riders have won grands prix in the premier class, when nine ultimately managed to succeed from the 18 races in 2016.

That campaign marked Suzuki's first win in MotoGP since 2007 and the first since it returned in 2015, when Maverick Vinales dominated the British Grand Prix. Since then, it has won three more grands prix - the latest coming last Sunday at Aragon - and all of them at the hands of Alex Rins.

For many, Rins was a pre-season championship favourite. In 2019, he showed he could go toe-to-toe with Marc Marquez and come out on top, as he did by 0.013 seconds in a thrilling Silverstone duel. And the steps forward Suzuki had made with the GSX-RR were poised to put it into the championship hunt from the off.

When Marquez broke his arm at the Spanish Grand Prix, Rins would likely have been the name - alongside Fabio Quartararo - most would have had on their lips as the favourite to fill the void.

But Rins' title hopes had already taken a serious blow the day before. A crash in qualifying left him with a broken and dislocated right shoulder and ruled him out of the first Jerez race. He returned for the Andalusian GP a week later and valiantly fought for 10th.

Rins' scorecard afterwards is one that, from the outside, appears disappointing - not least when you compare it to that of team-mate Joan Mir, who has scored the most points of anyone since the Czech GP (110). Examine them a little closer, however, and you begin to see just how much of a threat Rins would be in the title fight right now.

He narrowly missed the podium in fourth at Brno, despite still very much suffering with his shoulder. And, though the pain in his shoulder has improved, getting muscle back into it is still an ongoing challenge.

Rins had just taken the lead in the Austrian GP when he crashed, and was set for second at Le Mans before sliding out of the race late on. Add those 45 points he lost to his current tally of 85 and he'd be leading the standings by nine points after Aragon. But these are mistakes he fully holds his hands up to.

His Aragon victory, then, was more overdue than simply a product of the madness of the 2020 season.

"When you see them in their 'mode' so early in the race, you have to be scared. I was scared because I was expecting the Suzukis, but not this early in the race. Rins overtook me on, I think, the third lap - I was impressed by that" Franco Morbidelli

"As you said, we really struggled this year to get this position," Rins said, when asked by Autosport on Sunday if his Aragon win proved a point to his doubters. "I think I had the potential in a lot of races, but in the end this first position never came for mistakes, for crashes. And finally, it arrived. I'm so happy for this because it was not easy. And, for sure, a lot of people say to me 'you need to be more calm' because I had two crashes trying to overtake in Austria overtaking [Andrea] Dovizioso and Le Mans in the wet. But I knew that I had this potential and also the bike to do this."

As Rins points out, "not a lot of people were pushing for me to get this victory" ahead of Sunday. And somewhat foolishly. While Yamaha's Vinales and Rins' team-mate Mir looked the strongest on long runs in FP4, with a slightly injured Quartararo on the Petronas SRT M1 in the mix, Rins' pace was very comparable. But from 10th on the grid, he'd given himself a bit of a mountain to climb.

What proved key was his start. Rins launched up to fourth on the opening lap, putting him in prime position to ease through the leading trio of Quartararo - who struggled from lap three with an "out of control" front tyre pressure - Mir and Vinales, who had a surprising early drop in rear grip. On lap eight, Rins used the majestic turning and superior edge grip of his GSX-RR to glide up the inside of Vinales at the final Turn 16/17 double long left-hander at the end of the tour to take the lead.

Typically, the Suzuki comes on strong in the second half of races owing to its extreme kindness to its tyres. This was visible at the Catalan GP, when Mir came from four seconds back at one stage to end up just under a second from race winner Quartararo, with Rins in tow in third for his first podium of the year. The fact Rins was so switched on from the off "scared" SRT's Franco Morbidelli.

"I saw a Suzuki in a really good shape in this race," Morbidelli, who was sixth, said. "When you see them in their 'mode' so early in the race, you have to be scared. I was scared because I was expecting the Suzukis, but not this early in the race. Rins overtook me on, I think, the third lap - I was impressed by that. What you see when you're behind them is they have unbelievable grip and unbelievable drive out of the corners, and they are able just to ride on a different level compared to you."

Rins' ability to keep lapping consistently in the low-mid 1m49s on a soft rear tyre was only matched by Honda's Alex Marquez, with Mir fading in the closing stages in third as he got into "some trouble" with his front soft.

Rins and the younger Marquez brother are very familiar with each other, having been team-mates in Moto3 in 2013 and 2014. And now the Suzuki rider would get a taste of what he forced Marc Marquez to endure at Silverstone last year.

"This was my first race I won from leading the race," Rins said afterwards. "The last two wins were fighting one with Valentino [Rossi at Texas], the other with Marc. But this one was a bit more difficult because it's easy to do a mistake when you are leading the race. It was difficult to maintain the calm, because especially in this track you have a lot of braking zones with angle. So, it's easy to do a mistake, it's easy to brake a little bit later and go a bit wide. For this reason, I was a bit worried, but I tried to ride as I know."

A slide on the gas at the last corner and slightly outbraking himself into Turn 1 on laps 21 and 22 for Marquez gave Rins a 0.365s advantage to start the last lap. Setting virtually identical 1m49.3s on the final tour, Rins displayed every ounce of the talent Davide Brivio thought good enough to sign him on for two more years pre-season to claim Suzuki's first win of 2020.

Naturally, after the chequered flag, the attention was on Rins' team-mate Mir. Despite his late front tyre woes, he came home in third for his fifth podium this year to take a six-point lead in the standings - the first time since 2000 a Suzuki rider has led the premier class, when Kenny Roberts Jr won his only 500cc crown.

Quartararo's "disaster day" ended in his worst MotoGP result of 18th. Having emerged as the favourite for how he managed his difficult Le Mans race, whether he regains that label will depend largely on how he responds to his tough weekend in the second Aragon round this weekend. With Vinales fourth and Andrea Dovizioso on the Ducati seventh, the top four in the standings - Mir, Quartararo, Vinales and Dovizioso - are covered by just 15 points with four rounds to go.

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At just 36 points behind Mir, Rins is very much a dark horse - though somewhat loosely in the context of 2020 - in this title fight. And unlike what Mir and Quartararo claim, Rins is one of the potential title protagonists truly without pressure.

"For sure, if I get the championship this year - it's quite difficult because Joan is going very fast and very constant - it will be amazing because [I had] of a lot of crashes, a lot of zeroes," he said. "We struggled a lot with an injury also, so I will go race by race and I will try to give my maximum. I don't have pressure."

With a second outing coming at Aragon, few will be discounting Rins for the win this time around. Not that he should have ever been ruled out in the first place. While the consistency he has shown relative to team-mate and new championship leader Mir has been lacking, the speed - even with an injury - has always been there this year.

Another win in this weekend's Teruel GP would put him firmly into contention for this year's world title. But Rins is already looking beyond 2020 and views the final four rounds simply as him "getting ready for next year". Perhaps, then, in 12 months' time last Sunday's Aragon GP will prove to be the first slab paving Rins' way to the 2021 title...