The bold gambles that led to a Suzuki breakthrough

Sportswriters love an easy narrative, and when it came to the Austin MotoGP race one of the most obvious was the contrast between Suzuki's past and Suzuki's present.

While Alex Rins brought home a milestone win for the manufacturer, Maverick Vinales - who three years ago spurned a contract extension with Suzuki in favour of a move to Yamaha - had a shocking race to cap off a rather wretched start to 2019.

Losing just one place on the opening lap prompted a sardonic remark from a colleague that this was among the best-ever getaways for Vinales, an infamously tardy starter - and MotoGP race direction swiftly supplied the punchline by announcing the Yamaha man had jumped the start.

It then took a turn for the farcical as Vinales mistakenly served the Long Lap penalty, before taking the correct ride-through. Finishing 11th while your former team romps to victory is quite on the nose, not that it's some sort of proof that Vinales made a mistake in leaving Suzuki.

He certainly won't feel that way just yet - his Yamaha tenure might be a rollercoaster of false dawns, but he still has three more wins than Suzuki since the split.

What the Austin race does mean is that Suzuki can finally move on from Vinales, having put its faith in his successor - a belief that occasionally seemed optimistic and maybe even misplaced, but now looks completely vindicated.

Following Vinales' decision in 2016, Suzuki quickly called up a plug-and-play replacement in Ducati outcast Andrea Iannone. But the team also decided to nurture another rising star, having succeeded in developing Vinales.

Suzuki's two candidates to complete its full revamp, after the affable but not consistently fast enough Aleix Espargaro was let go, were Moto2 title rivals Johann Zarco and Rins.

Zarco, who was already the reigning Moto2 champion and would go on to add a second crown, looked the favourite at one point after agreeing to a testing programme with Suzuki as well as a deal to join its works roster for the prestigious Suzuka 8 Hours.

But in June that year, with Rins leading Zarco in the Moto2 standings, he got the nod to join Iannone for 2017-18 instead. Zarco dropped out of the Suzuka endurance race, signed with Tech3 Yamaha, won the Moto2 title again and proceeded to light up MotoGP in his rookie season.

In the meantime, both Rins and Suzuki were going through a rough patch. Rins may have posted a stellar record in his time in MotoGP's feeder series - fifth, second and third in three seasons in Moto3 alongside second and third in Moto2 is nothing to scoff at - but a world championship eluded him as his 2016 title run fizzled out.

He then hurt his back badly when he crashed the Suzuki MotoGP bike in post-season testing at Valencia, fractured his right ankle in the lead-up to his second premier-class race at Termas de Rio Hondo and broke his left wrist and forearm in a practice crash in the following round at Austin.

To win the 2019 crown, Rins and Suzuki would have to overcome daunting odds. But to have even the status of outside title contenders is already a mark of huge progress

In contrast to Zarco, who led on his MotoGP debut in Qatar and went on to put together a superb campaign, Rins skipped five races in the first half of 2017, and the ones he did contest he was not terribly fast in.

The respite was that the GSX-RR's 2017 specification was not doing much in Iannone's hands either. That is now frequently attributed to Suzuki choosing the wrong engine spec to homologate based on Iannone's feedback in the winter test at Jerez, which the injured Rins sat out.

It was a miserable season for Suzuki in any case, and it got increasingly miserable for Iannone, whose results dipped and whose future at the team unravelled. But there was light at the end of the tunnel for the manufacturer. Not only did Iannone seemingly snap out of it, scoring almost half of his points tally in the final four races, but Rins was finally healthy and up to speed and ended the season with fourth place at Valencia.

The GSX-RR was a regular podium contender in 2018 after off-season improvements, and team boss Davide Brivio has been keen to give credit to Rins for the gains. The young rider's efforts must have counted for a lot come contract negotiation time because four races into the campaign he was officially retained.

It didn't matter that, aside from a maiden podium in a memorably wacky Argentina race, Rins had crashed in three of the first four races, or that Iannone by that point had almost three times his points tally.

Moreover, Suzuki then doubled its bet by tapping rookie Joan Mir to replace Iannone, virtually bestowing the team leader role upon Rins. This seemed a huge gamble at the time, but a lot less so in hindsight once Rins strung together seven top-six finishes to end the campaign in fifth, five places ahead of Iannone. And by now? It looks to have been a masterstroke.

There's a risk of making too much of a single race victory, especially one made possible by an uncharacteristic blunder from Marc Marquez, who is the rider to beat in MotoGP right now. At the same time, Rins and Suzuki's Austin success was clearly no fluke.

Even prior to Austin, the leading MotoGP riders have been reliably pointing to Rins as a 2019 title threat, and him breaking his duck has now prompted Andrea Dovizioso to suggest Rins "can be in the championship fight until the end".

The 2019 GSX-RR is a lovely machine, both gentle on the tyres and "phenomenal" - according to Cal Crutchlow - in the corners. Its outlandish corner speed has allowed Rins to dominate highlight reels of overtakes in 2019 so far, with his key Turn 7 move on Valentino Rossi in America paling in comparison to some of the moves he was pulling in Argentina from 16th on the grid.

Equally, there is undeniable symbolic and morale-boosting value in outfoxing a win-hungry MotoGP legend such as Rossi in a breathless multi-lap dogfight on a track where Yamaha, in Vinales' hands, had the beating of Iannone's Suzuki for best of the rest behind Marquez last year.

Rins, it should be said, seems to have a fair bit in common with the seven-time champion he bested at Austin, in that he takes Rossi's trademark race day mastery to something of an extreme.

There's virtually no risk Rins's head will be turned by a manufacturer with more titles and a bigger budget

Just like the GSX-RR has a clear weakness on the straights, Rins has a chink in his armour - his practice and qualifying pace. Rins is still a pretty familiar face in Q1 and has only once started within the top four, a remarkable stat for a six-time podium finisher and a big contrast to his 13 pole positions in Moto3 (which leaves him second on the all-time list). Seventh on the grid at Austin was his season-best qualifying, and it was enough to win.

But most tracks are unlikely to be so forgiving, even if he always seems to have extra speed in his locker on Sunday. Should he address his single-lap deficit, a sustained title challenge would still be a big ask for Suzuki - a relative minnow compared to the likes of Honda and Ducati.

Suzuki has just two bikes on the grid - a rookie on one of them - and has not properly featured in any of the championship contests of the MotoGP era. The GSX-RR progressed in a major way last year, but this came at the price of development concessions for 2019, meaning a similar jump to the one a new-spec engine had provided at Assen the year before is unlikely.

And while the bike seems to be respectable enough everywhere - and could very well be favourite at tracks like Assen, Silverstone and Phillip Island - there are some horsepower-reliant venues where its main rivals are bound to lock out the big points with both works bikes and satellite machines.

To win the 2019 crown, Rins and Suzuki would have to overcome daunting odds. But to have even the status of outside title contenders is already a mark of huge progress. For Brivio, this can be a badge of pride.

Ahead of Rins' debut in 2017, he said that Suzuki had to be "more creative" to beat the top manufacturers and that developing young stars was part of this strategy.

"We've had a great experience with Maverick, and I can see Rins is one of the riders who can be at the top of MotoGP in future," he said then. "Maybe we might have a difficult year this year, but then we can secure a top rider for the next years. This is the challenge."

In hindsight, that's exactly how it panned out. And the cherry on top for Suzuki is the way this has all fitted into MotoGP's two-year works contract cycles. Like Vinales before, Suzuki's second homegrown prodigy has now hit his stride on the GSX-RR.

But unlike Vinales, with Rins' deal running through to 2020 and no obvious suitors just yet, there's virtually no risk his head will be turned by a manufacturer with more titles and a bigger budget.

You would expect that Rins will be grateful for Suzuki's trust in him and that the examples of not only Vinales at Yamaha but Zarco at KTM and Jorge Lorenzo at Ducati and now Honda could sour him on the prospect of switching manufacturers and having to learn a new bike.

The Suzuki-Rins partnership will rely on continued success, but at the moment they're seemingly in a perfect place. And after Austin, Suzuki can allow itself to dream bigger than it will have in years.