Rins came from tenth on the grid and finished the first lap in fourth at the 23-lap Aragon GP on Sunday before taking a lead on lap eight that he would not lose.
The Suzuki rider was first pressured by his teammate Joan Mir before Honda’s Alex Marquez chased him hard in the final stages, but he held on to take his third premier class win.
Rins had a breakthrough in Texas last year after defeating Rossi when Marquez fell from a commanding lead and left it 0.014 seconds behind in a thrilling Silverstone battle last August (pictured above on the finish line).
However, according to Rins, his Aragon win was harder to achieve as “it’s easy to make a mistake when you’re leading”.
“This was my first race in which I won the lead,” said the eighth MotoGP 2020 winner Rins. “I fought the last two victories with Valentino and Marc.
“But this one was a bit more difficult in my opinion because it’s easy to make a mistake when you’re leading the race. I tried to keep my calm and drove pretty well.
“It was difficult because I saw on the pit board that Joan and Alex were coming very quickly, but I tried to keep my calm and keep the tires for the end of the race because races with the soft rear cannot be sustained Constant tire life.
“But we understand. This first position for me, Suzuki, we’re doing a really good job and getting a lot of podiums. That means they did a good job preseason and they sure wanted to. “
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Rins had a difficult campaign, which was in large part plagued by the aftermath of a broken and dislocated arm during the GP weekend in Spain.
Teammate Mir’s form was mostly stronger, although Rins was at least second at Le Mans and had just taken the lead at the Austrian GP when he crashed.
When asked by Motorsport.com if his win at Aragon was a point for his doubters, he said, “Yeah, sure. As you said, we’ve really struggled to get that position this year. I think I had the potential to race in many areas, but in the end it never came first position, never for mistakes, for falls.
“It has finally arrived. I’m so happy about it because it wasn’t that easy and I’m sure a lot of people told me that I have to be calmer because I had two falls trying to overtake in Austria [Andrea] Dovizioso and Le Mans in the wet.
“But I knew I had that potential and the bike too to do it.”
After Rins was a tip for the title in the preseason after a strong test phase by many, he still has a shot on just 35 points behind the new championship leader Mir.
Race winner Alex Rins, Team Suzuki MotoGP
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images