Maverick Vinales admitted in an exclusive interview to The Race that he believed the Monster Energy Yamaha factory team was not the right challenge for him and that his dramatic mid-season move from the team to Aprilia was the right decision was not only made for his career, but also for his happiness.
It’s no secret that Vinales wasn’t a particularly happy Yamaha rider for a long time before leaving – and his anger that the team hit a boiling point at the start of the 2021 season despite his dominant win in Qatar’s opening race of the year.
He was occasional fast during the first half of the year but was plagued by inconsistencies, a problem that came to a head at the Red Bull Ring in August when he was fired from his team for deliberately attempting to blow the engine blow up his M1 at the Austrian race.
With Vinales immediately suspended and soon to leave, it was a relationship that ended as badly as it could have been – but despite the potential for bad blood between the two, the 26-year-old says he doesn’t have a bad feeling about Yamaha.
“I just want to say good words about her,” he told The Race, “because I have nothing bad to say. In the end you can see that the bike is at a great level and I’ve always said the bike was fantastic.
“We didn’t know exactly why it wasn’t working because sometimes I felt unbeatable and sometimes I was last. I went crazy.
“But the bike was at an incredible level. You can see that right away, it was fantastic. But it wasn’t my challenge anyway, so I took on the real challenge. “
Much of this need for new challenges appears to be due to the major changes in Vinales’ life in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. He married and soon became a father when he and his wife Raquel gave birth to baby Nina in May.
And when he spoke openly about these big changes, he admitted that they changed his focus in life – and made the decision to seek a new professional challenge easier.
“I’ve changed my priorities a lot,” he admitted. “When you have a family, you don’t think about tomorrow, but long-term. You cannot think day after day. I used to think a lot about living life the way it was without thinking too much about the future or how I would make my reality come true.
“It’s nice to win, but I want to feel a little more. I want to feel a team around me and that’s why I moved. I moved to have this atmosphere, this passion, and mostly because I think if you go to a place where everyone is hungry, it makes you even tougher. “
He seems to have found that with Aprilia too, with the different atmosphere of a passionate and emotional Italian team adding something for him.
“An Italian team is very different from a Japanese team,” explained the Spaniard. “To be honest, I’ve always had a great relationship with the Japanese team because I love the food, the culture, the places as they are – calm, systematic. It makes you the same. But other than that, I needed a little more fire around me. A little more support on and off the bike. In the end I want to show a lot and it was difficult. “
While the decision to move Aprilia to the back-of-the-grid position may have come as a surprise to many, it was, he says, partly backed by a close confidante on the team – the former Suzuki teammate, the Andorran Neighbors and good friend Aleix Espargaro, whom team boss Massimo Rivola has already admitted, was an important mediator in signing Vinales.
“Aleix was important to make that happen,” said Vinales, “because I have a good relationship with him and we talk a lot when we fly together. But I think it was more the ambience and the passion that made the decision. They’re a fairly new brand – not new in racing history, but new to MotoGP.
“Somehow I want this process to bring a factory back to the top like we’ve done in the past. It motivates me a lot. It’s a different challenge, but it’s one that motivates me. I want to be a champion, but I also want to do something special, not do what the others are doing.
And since the former Suzuki teammates are reunited on a motorcycle that recalls their 2015 and 2016 seasons, and together developed the GSX-RR into a winning package, Vinales has also thought about the past and the future.
“I don’t want to talk too much about the past,” he added, “because it’s clear that I made a mistake” [leaving Suzuki]. In the end we made a really good team, but at that moment the Yamaha was a winning bike and I chose this path. Wrong or not, I don’t know because ultimately you make your own decisions.
“But it has brought me to a place where I am very happy. I come back to the races excitedly when I didn’t arrive before sad, but without the energy I needed. There are nice moments coming and that is a very nice feeling.
“I’m really happy, to be honest, because I somehow regained my motivation, my passion for motorcycles, which is very important. In the end, it is the fuel that gives you the energy to keep going. I think I still have a lot to give and a lot that I haven’t given, so it’s very important to me. At the moment I am accepting this challenge, which in my opinion is the right moment to accept it, wake up and keep pushing. “