Jerez.- Alex Rins arrived co-leader of the MotoGP World Championship in Jerez, tied with Fabio Quartararo, and leaves here fourth, 20 points behind the Frenchman, after a race to forget, with a poor qualifying on Saturday, a worse start on the grid and a track exit that left him without scoring.
“Pol Espargaró and Enea Bastianini blocked me a bit at the start,” admitted Rins, who climbed almost 20 positions in Portimao.
“In the race it was very difficult for me to maintain the front end, which was blocked. In turn 11 (the same one in which it fell last year) I completely lost the front end and I don’t know how I got the bike up,” he said.
“It was a race with fatal sensations, riding the Suzuki today was like putting a cat in water,” he staged.
“In corners that I am quite good at, it was impossible for me to stop the bike. What has cost me are the fast corners, the type of corners that in Portimão allowed me to gain positions”
“We have to analyze why it happened. After the scare the rhythm wasn’t bad, I was turning more or less like the second group, but we lost a bit of Suzuki’s DNA”.
A result that does not allow him to score any points and slows him down in his progression in the championship.
“This affects like a crash; in the end it’s a zero. I think we’re fourth, 20 points behind the first now, there are many races left, I think we can recover, but we have to understand why we couldn’t drive today.”
In Portugal Joan Mir also complained about the same problem with the front wheel.
“I don’t think it’s the same, it’s another circuit, other tires and another temperature, it’s as if I had rented the kart that doesn’t work. The front end was constantly closing on me”.
“I don’t know if it was the rubber, the grip or something else. I tried a new fork since Saturday, but the sensations were good, tomorrow in the test we will go back to the standard fork to see if it improves things. At the moment we don’t have many parts to test nor the improvement of aerodynamics”, settled the Barcelonan.
