When Aprilia announced they had extended the contract of Maverick Vinales with their MotoGP factory team until the end of the 2024 season back at the end of May, the move seemed like a very risky one.
Having joined the Italian factory midway through the 2021 season following a high profile falling out with his Yamaha side, Vinales had at that point, struggled to make much of an impression on his new bike.
At the time that new deal with Aprilia was announced, Vinales had managed to finish higher than tenth in just two of the 12 races he had ridden for the team.
That is something that had even seen the Spaniard start to make some rather public expressions of disapproval about his situation in the team, which may well have drawn some worrying parallels with his exit from Yamaha, after a spell with that team that had promised so much , but delivered relatively little.
As a result, with news of that extension for Vinales also coming shortly after news of Suzuki’s withdrawal from the series had thrust two bona fide title contenders, Joan Mir – the 2020 champion – and Alex Rins on to the rider market, the decision to move so quickly to hand Vinales such a long term contract, felt a rather strange.
Now though, little more than a month later, events at the Dutch TT in Assen over the course of the last weekend, suggest that Aprilia may well be set for vindication when it comes to their decision to hand that new deal to Vinales.
While Vinales’ Aprilia teammate Aleix Espargaro fought back heroically after being caught up in title rival Fabio Quartaro’s crash to claim a fourth place in that race that keeps his World Championship hopes alive, Vinales himself was producing some serious cause for excitement for the Italian factory.
After starting 11th on the grid in the Netherlands, Vinales fought his way through the field to work his way up to third in difficult, overcast and briefly rainy conditions, before holding his nerve to see off the attentions of the dangerous Jack Miller, and claim his first race podium as an Aprilia rider.
The fact that Vinales was able to produce such a performance is of course a major breakthrough for the Spaniard and his prospects at Aprilia, especially considering this was arguably not a one-off.
Just a week before he made that long-awaited return to the podium at Assen, Vinales had been forced to retire from the German GP at Sachsenring through no fault of his own due to an issue with the ride height device on his Aprilia, but not before he had shown signs there too, of being capable of competing for a podium spot.
Given Assen and the Sachsenring are considerably different tracks, the fact that Vinales has been competitive on both, does seem to suggest that he is now starting to find a way to make that Aprilia work for him.
With that in mind, it would feel like a surprise not to see Vinales continue to compete at the top end of races – and potentially championships in the future – considering he is looking increasingly with his bike and team, the sort of situation where he often seems to carry out his best work.
As a result, it seems that Aprilia’s decision to keep Vinales within their squad for the foreseeable future may already be showing signs of being a move that could be about to pay off.
Indeed, when you consider how long there is to go on that deal that Vinales signed with the factory, and the wins he has previously shown he is capable of getting in the right environment, that means that the apparent risk they had taken with this new contract, could prove very profitable in the years to come.
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