In nearly taking pole position and finishing second in the sprint at the Circuit of the Americas, LCR MotoGP rider Alex Rins took a page out of the absent Marc Marquez’s well-worn book of making his fellow Honda riders look extremely ordinary.
Rins had already finished Friday practice third-fastest, five tenths of a second in hand over the works Honda of his former Suzuki team-mate Joan Mir. He then qualified 0.160s off pole in second, with none of his fellow Honda riders getting out of Q1 and only Mir getting anywhere near doing so.
He then harried the otherwise-dominant Pecco Bagnaia in the sprint and, when that fizzled out as Rins made a mess of Turn 12 at the end of the back straight and dropped back, he was still able to bounce back and recover second place with relative ease.
All the while, every other Honda finished well outside the top 10, having lost over a second per lap to Rins and with only Mir’s best race lap just narrowly within a second of Rins’ 2m03.421s.
Rins’ new team-mate Takaaki Nakagami already took a great interest in the Spaniard’s COTA form after Friday, vowing to take a deep dive into his data – and though those lessons have proven difficult to put into use, Nakagami was at least able to offer his explanation for how Rins was separating himself from the other RC213Vs.
“Definitely his riding style is completely opposite, like Moto2 style,” Nakagami said of Rins. “Maybe he realised this track has very poor grip [and adjusted it] – he’s just carrying speed, a lot faster, it looks like he doesn’t pick up the bike [quickly] but he gains, somehow.
“A lot less [rear tyre] spin. But me and Joan, we try to stop the bike and try to pick up the bike as soon as possible. We try to open like full throttle but it just creates crazy [wheel]spin. And we don’t gain anything. From the edge, from the apex area – our problem is, as soon as I touch the throttle, crazy spin.
“Snapping, so difficult to stay on the bike. It looks like in this moment I need to be super smooth.”
Nakagami’s assessment certainly tallies with the general stereotype of Rins as an ultra-smooth rider who doesn’t like to hammer the front brake or go full on the throttle coming out of corners, even if MotoGP electronics can take it.
“Alex is the kind of rider that doesn’t like very much the filter of the electronics,” was team boss Lucio Cechinello’s explanation to MotoGP.com’s Simon Crafar on Saturday. “He prefers to have more the torque of the bike and the power delivery in the hand.”
And while dialling in some extra aggression into a riding style from Moto2 to MotoGP increasingly seems desirable – see this year’s sole rookie Augusto Fernandez feeling his biggest initial limitation was simply not having the confidence to really lean on the front brake the way you need to in MotoGP – Rins has already carved out a great premier-class career for himself while retaining his smoothness.
For Nakagami, it is not something that can be imitated in-weekend – also because going away from ‘V-shaped’ cornering requires a “complete” reset of the mechanical set-up and the electronics. Otherwise, for him there is a lack of front feeling.
The other Honda riders are admittedly less preoccupied by trying to tap into what Rins is accessing. After all, him going well at COTA is nothing unexpected – he has a formidable record at the Texan venue, with wins in Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP.
For Marc Marquez’s stand-in Stefan Bradl, this COTA weekend is effectively survival mode. “I’m not in a position to take any risk – we have to be realistic, I’m experienced enough to analyse the situation well,” he said after qualifying 21st and finishing 18th.
“When I came here, I was already a little bit tired from two days of intense Jerez testing. Coming here, I’m physically at the limit at the moment.”
Mir, meanwhile, pointed out that he was a decent match for Rins in last year’s Grand Prix of the Americas, when they were still team-mates at Suzuki.
And while acknowledging his former squadmate’s obvious affinity with and pace at the venue, he attributed his deficit to his own lack of feeling, “not riding well”, with two principal issues highlighted: his position (and therefore comfort) on the bike and throttle application.
“More than looking at the others, it’s more how I feel. What I want, what I need, what I can do to improve,” Mir said.
“It’s a little bit this, rather than to watch the data from another one. We do it – to compare, as the others do. But for me, the data can show you a little bit ‘this corner you are faster and in that one you are slower’, rather than the feeling. And the feeling is the thing that we have to work on and must improve.”
As good as Rins has been this weekend, taking on Bagnaia on Sunday has to look as an extreme long shot, also because the package he has under him is, relatively speaking, just not as competitive as the Suzuki GSX-RR with which he won at Austin four years ago and definitely not a match for the Ducati Desmosedici right now. Another great result, though, should absolutely be on the table.
“For sure, this bike is not the same I was riding the last years,” said Rins.
“And what I can say is, on the chicanes this one is more demanding. I need to use more strength, with my body, to be fast.
“But let’s see tomorrow. We have a good bike, we have a lot of information.”
