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It’s hard not to feel sorry for Suzuki rider Alex Rins, when you look back at a 2020 MotoGP season that should have been all his. The Japanese firm’s number one rider, the hard worker who has helped develop the GSX-RR into arguably the best bike on the grid, and a proven race winner, he was dramatically upstaged last season by sophomore team-mate and title winner Joan Mir.
Yet despite a year that could have left a very bitter taste in the mouth of the 25-year-old, he’s come out of it still smiling. Content that bad luck and injury masked his own real potential in 2020 and going into the 2021 season more sure of himself and his bike, he’s lucky in that he’s set to get a second crack at the whip when the season does get underway.
Rins’ title challenge was abandoned before it had even really begun in 2020, thanks to a crash in qualifying for the opening race of the year in Jerez – a rookie mistake that he admitted to The Race was something he’d been warning himself throughout the lockdown delay to avoid!
“I remember saying during the lockdown that it would be a very strange year where we would need to take a lot of care not to have any hard crashes for this reason. And look what happened! Bam, in the first race, I put away the shoulder!” he joked.
“The shoulder injury put me away from the title fight, and the two crashes in Austria and Le Mans were hard crashes. I was first or second, it took away a lot of points from me. But that’s OK.”
Missing the opening round as a result of extensive damage to his right shoulder after both dislocating it and fracturing it in the Jerez tumble, Rins got his season was off to a rocky start before it even properly began.
However, it was arguably crashes not at Jerez but at the Red Bull Ring and Le Mans that cost him the title. Falling from both races while in the lead and costing himself 50 points in the process – and finishing the year 32 behind teammate Mir – he knows that it’s the main area he needs to address for 2021.
“I was irregular,” he admits now. “I had a lot of good results but a lot of bad results too, and we need to improve on that for this year. In the end, Joan was very consistent, and he got the title. I need to be like that, to be there every race, and to be prepared to finish fourth or fifth if I can’t be on the podium.
“I felt a lot of good and bad moments. One of the bad moments was the crash in corner 11 in Jerez, another was the crash in Austria when I was overtaking Dovi [Andrea Dovizioso] to lead the race. With all the power I was putting into me, the bike, to recover from the injury, it was a big shame to crash there.
“I had a lot of good moments though, especially at the end of the season with all the podiums. The third position in Barcelona was like a first position for me, after all the hard work. The victory in Aragon, leading the race [for 16 laps], was amazing too.”
And those good moments, including three podiums and a win from 13 races, means that he’s not too bitter about how the year played out for him despite watching his team-mate take the title – and is determined to use the loss as motivation for 2021.
“In the beginning it was hard,” he conceded to The Race. “I was fighting for a lot of years to become world champion, and it still hasn’t happened.
“But I realised that if I couldn’t win it, then I would like it to go to Suzuki. I’m happy about that. And Joan deserved it this year too. He was super regular and super constant, and that’s what makes the difference.
“Let’s try to get it this year. We have the same bike, we know it very well now, and for sure Suzuki are working on some updates for us. The first rival is your team-mate, so I will give 100% to beat him.
“He is the first one [to beat]. He got the title last year and for sure he will try to keep it.”
One thing that Rins doesn’t have to worry about in 2021 is his future, though. Pledging his loyalty (along with Mir) for 2021 and 2022 to Suzuki before the delayed 2020 season even kicked off, he says now that it was definitely the right move given how the year played out both on and off the track.
Much has been made of the strength of Suzuki’s team bond since Mir took the title, and it seems that while there might be a fierce rivalry between the pair on the track, it’s something that hasn’t impacted the atmosphere in the garage – something which proved important in 2020 (and will arguably prove even more important now, given the sudden departure of team boss Davide Brivio).
“It was the right moment,” says Rins of his two-year extension. “I believe in Suzuki, and in the end they gave me a lot of power to push.
“I feel at home with the team, and they always take care of me. When I was injured, the first thing they told me was ‘Alex, let’s take some rest, let’s get prepared for the next season.’ I told them ‘no-no, let’s go on track and fight through the pain’.
“We are very close, with my mechanics, Joan’s mechanics. It is like a family, and sometimes this is what makes all the difference. In the bad moments, they are there and they support me very well. I feel this, and it’s nice.”
“It was a super strange year, with a lot of races. We’re used to doing three races in a row just one time, in Malaysia, Australia and Japan, and this year we did it three or four times. It was hard, physically for me with this injury.
“But the team made the year a bit easier, all the situations around COVID and the lockdown. At the start of the season I called everyone a lot to make sure that they were well. They took a lot of care all season, too, because no one in the team caught it all season, and I hope that none of them catch it again this year.”
