According to Alex Rins, Alcaniz Grand Prix winner Franco Morbidelli “made the difference” compared to his own win at Motorland Aragon just seven days earlier.
The Suzuki racer used the same soft-soft tire strategy that helped him win the Aragon GP to take both wins at the Spanish venue, despite an inspired drive from Morbidelli denying him the feat.
The Petronas SRT man was only able to achieve sixth place in the Aragon GP behind his Yamaha racer Maverick Vinales, who had managed to bring the checkered flag to fourth place, 4.7 seconds behind Rins.
The three-time MotoGP winner says Morbidelli’s dramatic form improvement in the Alcaniz GP – represented by a race time 14 seconds faster than his Aragon GP run and seven seconds faster than Rins ‘race win time – the key differentiator in Rins’ determination was that he could himself did not repeat the victory in Aragon and had to be satisfied with 2.2 seconds behind the Italian.
“The difference (compared to the Aragon GP performance) was that Franco (Morbidelli) did a really good job, was so quick and didn’t give me a chance to show him my bike,” explained Rins.
“In the middle of the race I had problems with my soft front tire, but I think it was the best choice for me when I tried the medium in RP4 and had a little problem.
“I was waiting for Franco’s tires to fall but it was so consistent and I couldn’t get close enough to overtake so I decided to focus on Joan instead.”
Rins insisted he was “happy” with second place after reducing teammate Joan Mir’s championship advantage from 36 to 32 points. However, he admitted that it would still be difficult to fight the Moto3 world champion out of 17 in the last three competitions for the title “very consistently this year”.
“Overall I’m happy, 45 points in these two weeks and now only 32 behind Joan (Mir), but he’s been very consistent this year so it will be difficult to win the championship, but if we don’t make it , we will make it, will continue to occupy the top positions, ”added Rins.
“I wasn’t particularly thinking about the championship, I could see that the gap with Joan was about 2.7 seconds, so I thought ‘Keep your tires Alex’ because if I kept pushing I would have destroyed my tire and Joan would catch me. ”
While catching up with Me may look difficult with only a few events remaining, Rins’ chances of making it a Suzuki 1-2 in the Drivers Championship look infinitely better given the shape of the four drivers ahead.
Andrea Dovizioso has not landed on the podium since his GP victory in Austria in August, while Fabio Quartararo and Maverick Vinales have not reached the penalty area since the Catalan-Emilia Romagna encounter.
Morbidelli’s Alcaniz win was his first podium since his first premier class win at the San Marino GP, his third of the season.
Rins is now seeing a purple speck of results after taking three podiums in the last four races – with a crash at the French GP while finishing second in the closing stages and denying him four out of four – meaning he got 18 points The gap to second-placed Quartararo could be swallowed up very quickly if he maintains his current form.