Coming into the 2024 MotoGP season, three riders stood on the edge of making history: Vinales was one with Aprilia, Alex Rins with Yamaha and Jack Miller with KTM are the others.
All grand prix winners already with two manufacturers (Vinales with Suzuki and Yamaha; Rins with Suzuki and Honda; Miller with Honda and Ducati), a victory in 2024 would make them the first riders in the MotoGP era to have won with three different marques.
Vinales’ first win on the Aprilia in the Portugal sprint effectively made him the record holder, but officially he isn’t.
When the sprint format was introduced last year, it was always billed as being counted separate to a grand prix win in the record books. And, understandably, this was bound to cause headaches.
Something all the more complicated about the sprint format is the reticence by many – including the championship – to even refer to it as a ‘race’.
Speaking to numerous paddock journalists last year, the consensus was that most in their weekend written content dedicate very few column inches to what happened in the sprint unless it had a major bearing on the grand prix and the championship at large.
Read over Autosport’s magazine reports for each grand prix and you’ll see how little the sprint is mentioned.
Maverick Vinales, Aprilia Racing Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Vinales’ sprint win in Portugal, which marked several milestones – the aforementioned third win on different bikes, as well as his first for Aprilia and first since Qatar 2021 before his acrimonious Yamaha split – forced a change of tune in how the sprints are viewed by some.
For Vinales, he and his Aprilia team celebrated it as if it was a grand prix victory. As far as the Spaniard was concerned, the effort expended in a sprint is more than a grand prix, and the statistical standing of his victory means little.
“For me, no [it doesn’t make a difference] because at the end we race harder on the sprint than in the race,” he said. “Normally the sprint is where I struggle the most so to make a victory in the sprint is amazing.”
Other riders have taken different approaches to their sprint wins. Alex Marquez, who won the Saturday contests at Silverstone and in Malaysia, told Autosport last year that his British GP sprint success “was a nice one, but it was a sprint race in the wet. I’m always realistic on that point, not [saying] ‘I won the race, I’m the best…
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