Why a Suzuki refugee feels he deserves MotoGP's toughest challenge

At the end of the 2021 season, Alex Rins’ future MotoGP options were limited to staying at Suzuki on less money than he was currently being paid, or take a non-factory bike at a satellite outfit.

For a rider who has won three times in his career, 2021 was a disaster. Scoring just one podium, Rins ended the year with just 99 points to his tally having crashed in six races and failed to start the Catalan GP after he broke his wrist when he cycled into a van while he was looking at his phone.

But the rider that came out of the blocks in 2022 was the Rins we needed to see – fast and consistent. An average start to the season in Qatar saw Rins come away with just a seventh place, while in the wet Indonesian GP he was fifth.

In Argentina he carved through from seventh to third, and did the same at Austin – making some decisive overtakes in the best ride of his career, at least for the two weeks between the Americas GP and Portuguese GP. Crashing in qualifying and ending up at the back of the grid at Portimao, Rins scythed through the field to finish fourth and briefly take a joint lead in the championship with Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.

Then the rug was pulled from underneath him.

After a mistake in Spain left him 19th, not 24 hours later Suzuki informed its MotoGP squad that it would be quitting the championship at the end of 2022, citing financial reasons and a shift in the automotive market as its motivation. Rins failed to finish the next three races, the Spaniard taken out twice by Takaaki Nakagami at Mugello and Barcelona, before withdrawing from the German GP with a fracture wrist as a consequence of the latter incident.

This downturn in fortune came at the worst possible moment, as Rins sought to salvage a place on a grid with more riders than bikes available for 2023. Rins engaged in discussions with the likes of KTM and Ducati, with Honda eventually winning his signature. Following the Dutch GP – in which he was 10th – Rins signed a two-year deal directly with Honda to join LCR in place of Alex Marquez, who will join Gresini Ducati in 2023.

After being left in the lurch by Suzuki, Rins replaces Alex Marquez at LCR Honda next year

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Despite the volatility of the rider market and the desperation of his situation – Rins admitting in conversation with Autosport’s Tank Slappers Podcast that he was “scared” about losing his job – he was adamant he would settle for nothing less than a factory contract.

“First of all, it’s a pleasure to have the contract with an official manufacturer, with Honda,” Rins said. “For sure, if I was signing with Lucio [Cecchinello], with not an official bike, was ok, [if] it was the only way I would take it. But I’m super-happy, because I don’t see myself running with not an official bike.

“Let me explain, I think I have a lot of experience, a lot of capacity to improve a bike. I couldn’t see me with not an official bike. It’s difficult to explain. But, it was the only way. We had the option to go to Ducati, we had more options also, but at Ducati they couldn’t secure me an official bike. I really understood and also I say thanks to them because they gave me an opportunity.”

Rins was offered the Gresini seat Alex Marquez has secured for next year, but would only have a 2022-spec bike at his disposal if he took that option. With LCR, he will have machine parity with Marc Marquez and what is expected to be Rins’ current Suzuki team-mate Joan Mir at the factory Honda squad.

"I’m really excited to join [Honda]. I’m not thinking in a way like ‘the bike is so difficult, let’s see what we can do’. I’m not thinking this. I just want to ride the bike, try to make the bike [fit] to myself and get the results" Alex Rins

Honda has endured a torrid few years in the premier class. The serious arm injury for Marc Marquez has been the large cause of its downturn in results, with his absence in 2020 and under-par fitness highlighting the true shortcomings of the RC213V. To arrest this, Honda boss Alberto Puig admitted ahead of the summer break that Honda has to “change our way of thinking”.

Considering Marc Marquez is still the top Honda rider in the 2022 standings having been absent since June’s Catalan GP and having failed to score a podium (Marquez is 13th on 60 points, Takaaki Nakagami is 16th on 42, Pol Espargaro is 17th on 40 and Alex Marquez is 18th on 27), it is clear that wholesale change had to be made to HRC’s stable.

Alex Marquez, weary of the problems he has faced in getting the Honda to perform, has found a nice exit route with Gresini. Nakagami is expected to be relegated to a test rider role in order to be replaced by hotshot Moto2 young gun Ai Ogura, with Mir set to take Espargaro’s place at the factory squad as he nears a return to KTM with Tech3.

Suzuki's loss is Honda's gain as Mir looks set to replace Pol Espargaro at the factory Honda squad

Photo by: MotoGP

But why will Rins – and Mir by extension – be any different?

“I think I have quite good experience in the MotoGP category improving the Suzuki bike,” Rins offers. “In the end, with my help, we made a really competitive bike and a world champion bike. So, for sure the first months will be a little bit difficult to help Honda to improve their bike. I need to adapt and I need to understand the bike. But I already talked with Lucio [Cecchinello] and he says that they will make a new bike for next year. So, I will try to understand as soon as possible the bike and try to give all my experience to them.”

Espargaro’s signing from KTM for 2021 was seen as some out-of-the-box thinking from Honda. It was largely reasoned that the way the 2013 Moto2 world champion rode the KTM wasn’t dissimilar to how the Honda needed to be ridden. By that same logic, the Suzuki needs to be ridden in a completely different way to the Honda, given the inline-four cylinder-engined bikes are more about corner speed – whereas a bike like the Honda makes time in a different way, with riders charging into a corner and accelerating hard and early out of it in a sort of ‘V’ shape.

Rins can at least look at the breakthrough Maverick Vinales has made at Aprilia – a V4 bike, like the Honda – having come from the inline-four Yamaha to see that such a transition can work. That is important given how difficult many riders have found the Honda over the years – not least three-time world champion Jorge Lorenzo, whose career was effectively ended by his one-year stint on the RC213V. It’s a task the magnitude of which Rins is under no illusion.

“Sincerely, in my head, I ask myself this question,” Rins said, when asked how he looks at the challenge ahead of him given the struggles of others. “If you see the past, Lorenzo went to Honda and he struggled a lot. Pol has done some good races but he’s struggling a little bit. Alex Marquez got some podiums, but also he’s struggling. I mean, I’m really excited to join that project. I’m not thinking in a way like ‘the bike is so difficult, let’s see what we can do’. I’m not thinking this. I just want to ride the bike, try to make the bike [fit] to myself and get the results.”

The current MotoGP landscape has very much seen a shift in the balance in power towards the European manufacturers and away from the once all-conquering Japanese marques. Part of that is down to what many see as an apparent stubbornness within the engineering departments of Japanese factories.

But Rins feels the views held by the paddock on Japanese manufacturers is somewhat distorted and doesn’t necessarily view their way of working as bad.

“I mean, I will try to give my maximum to understand the bike,” Rins adds. “I know I will work again with Japanese people, who are good. We are talking like the Japanese are so bad, but they are so good. They take their time to produce and improve the things. Like, for example we can see in the championship that maybe Ducati has some new aero parts, also Aprilia – Italian guys – are trying to improve their aero. Not copying Ducati, but looking at Ducati. I pushed Suzuki also to improve in some areas and it takes time. But when they bring it, they have an explanation why they took such a long time.”

Having Rins on board should help Honda overcome a miserable season in MotoGP

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Honda will most certainly benefit from Rins’ experiences at Suzuki. As he noted, he helped produce a championship-winning bike. And in two of his three wins, he won after going toe-to-toe with Honda riders – Marc Marquez in a thrilling Silverstone encounter in 2019, and against Alex Marquez at Aragon in 2020.

Moreover, it will seemingly benefit from Rins’ mentality. Despite racing in MotoGP for six years now, he feels he is far from done with his learning. That should stop him from falling into the trap of complacency as he tackles his adaptation to the Honda.

“Sincerely, my learning is still increasing, it’s still going up,” he said. “Every year and every race, I learn something new. By myself, I’m working even harder year by year, and you know I was a bit scared when Suzuki announced its retirement because I’m not anymore a rookie rider and I was trying to find a factory bike, that luckily we got. But I was a little bit scared, because it was not easy. But sincerely, I’m still learning in my career, I’m still training hard, discovering new things, so I think I have a lot of way to go.”

"I couldn’t see me with not an official [factory] bike. It’s difficult to explain. But, it was the only way. We had the option to go to Ducati, but they couldn’t secure me an official bike" Alex Rins

Rins has just nine races left in his time with Suzuki before he must re-establish himself again at a new manufacturer. Having righted the wrongs of his 2021 season on a vastly improved Suzuki package in 2022, any rider would have found the situation he is in now, frustrating.

But not Rins. Wrestling with “strange emotions” as he watches his current crew scuttle around the paddock to try and secure their own futures, Rins speaks as a man who knows he’s one of the lucky ones in the Suzuki debacle.

Unfortunately, there’s no tangible confidence to hang any sort of prediction on for Rins’ incoming tenure at Honda. While there are signs elsewhere on the grid that transitioning from one bike to another successfully is possible, Rins is at the mercy of Honda’s ability to learn from the mistakes of its current bike.

But given what we’ve seen of Rins in the past and the self-improvements he has made this year, any failure to be competitive at Honda won’t be through a lack of trying…

Rins shakes hands with Cecchinello as they ponder the future

Photo by: Team LCR