Injured Rins will decide Germany MotoGP participation on Saturday

The three-time MotoGP race winner fractured his wrist at the first corner of the Catalan GP when he was wiped out by Takaaki Nakagami in an incident that led many riders to question race direction’s operation.

Rins was passed fit to ride on Thursday at the Sachsenring and ended Friday 11th overall despite suffering a crash at Turn 1 in FP1.

The Suzuki rider admits he is “suffering more than I thought” and is not sure if he will see out the rest of the Germany weekend.

“I’m sore, in FP2 I suffered a bit more, I don’t know if it was because of the heat or because I rode faster, but it cost me quite a bit,” he said.

“I suffered a little bit where I expected, which is in the three hard brakings, in the first corner, in the downhill and in the last braking.

“We finished eleventh, 0.5s off the first and it’s not bad, but the truth is that I’m suffering more than I thought.”

Suzuki team boss Livio Suppo said on Friday that “it doesn’t make sense for” Rins to continue this weekend and instead sit on the sidelines to recover more for next week’s Dutch TT at Assen.

Rins says his continued participation in the German GP will largely depend on how he feels in the morning and will take a final decision then.

“I don’t know, it will depend on how I spend the night and, above all, how I wake up in the morning, we’ll see what we do,” Rins added.

“Of course, I’d like to race this weekend, but if it hurts a lot and I can’t do more than three or four laps in a row it’s silly to continue.

“Let’s see how FP3 goes, depending on how I feel we’ll decide in one direction or another.”

Rins comes into the German GP weekend off the back of three successive DNFs, with his title hopes in ruin having slid 69 points adrift of Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo in the standings.

Nakagami escaped punishment for his Barcelona collision, which also included Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia, with Rins taking aim at MotoGP’s stewards as not being competent enough.