Leg injury not the reason for poor results

Alex Rins has stressed that his lack of competitiveness at struggling Yamaha has nothing to do with the limp with which he has been walking since his freak accident at Mugello over a year ago.

Both Rins and Fabio Quartararo have voiced their disappointment with the lack of grip on the M1 increasingly loudly of late. They have cited multiple problems with the bike, which is the most sensitive on the grid to changes in the level of grip from one circuit to the next.

At Motegi, the Spaniard and the Frenchman struggled with the Yamaha’s lack of traction and rear grip. Quartararo finished twelfth in Sunday’s Grand Prix, more than 32 seconds behind winner Francesco Bagnaia. He lost a place to Johann Zarco on the last lap as a result of running out of fuel.

It was the second such case in three weeks for Quartararo, after exactly the same trouble struck at Misano two races earlier.

Six-time MotoGP winner Rins had an even more disappointing Japanese Grand Prix. He finished second last, more than 40 seconds behind Bagnaia and ahead of only the Iwata factory’s test rider, wildcard Remy Gardner.

The Catalan, normally a talkative rider with a great sense of humour, was not at all amused by his time in Japan. Apart from the result itself and the gap to the front of the field, he felt it could also mislead observers into thinking the performance level is down to something more than just the bike.

Rins still has an obvious limp as a legacy of the left ankle injury he sustained when he crashed at Mugello last year, an accident that led him to miss more races (12) than he rode in (eight).

Another accident at Assen this season put him out of action in Germany and Britain. Rins’s best result since switching from LCR Honda to Yamaha for this season has been a ninth place at Aragon.

Despite his poor run of form, he stresses that the leg is not a factor at all.

“People start making wrong assumptions, Rins told Autosport. “If I had a left leg like my right, my results would be identical. On the bike, it doesn’t affect me at all.”

Yamaha is in the midst of a process of change as it looks to start climbing towards the top of the standings under the leadership of Max Bartolini, the technical director who arrived this year from Ducati.

In addition to regaining a satellite team in 2025, the Japanese manufacturer has advanced the V-twin four-cylinder…