Alex Rins reckons the fact he elected to use up more of his Suzuki’s tyres at Turn 2 throughout the Australian Grand Prix was the “key” to victory.
The Spaniard made up an impressive amount of ground in the opening laps of the Phillip Island encounter from tenth on the grid, Rins rising all the way to fourth by the time seven laps had been completed.
From then on he battled with Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia, VR46’s Marco Bezzecchi as well as Honda’s Marc Marquez for supremacy, Rins seemingly enjoying greater rear traction through the first couple of bends in particular.
The Suzuki race then set up race leader Bagnaia perfectly on the final lap to scythe through to the lead at Turn 2 before fending off a charging Marquez across the remaining bends to take the chequered flag 0.186s clear of his countryman, claiming his and Suzuki’s first victory in two years as a result.
Rins – who now has wins at Phillip Island in all three grand prix classes – described the “really fun race” as being like “Moto3”, the now five-time premier class race winner reckoning pushing harder in the right-handed corners relative to his rivals helped secure him success.
“I’m so happy to get the victory here in Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP, we deserved this one and we worked really hard to get it,” explained Rins.
“During the race it wasn’t that easy because the pace wasn’t so high, but I was feeling good in managing the rear tyre and finding traction and I was passing someone every lap until I arrived in the top four or five.
“At one point I realised they were riding so slow so I pulled in front to see if I was able to open a gap, but Pecco (Bagnaia) overtook me on the straight so then I decided to stay behind him and save some rear tyre.
“Before the race we made a plan and put a cross on the corners where we would take care of the tyre, and here you don’t need to take a lot of care on the right side of the tyre so I was carrying more corner speed (at Turn 2) than the others and accelerating a bit more on the exit.
“This was the key because it gave me a lot of positions, and I could also stop the bike well there apart from a couple laps where Marc (Marquez) put his bike there, but it was a really fun race because it was like Moto3.
“Going into the last lap on the straight I knew that if I started the lap quite close to him I had some options to overtake him on exit at the first corner, and we did it.”
Rins insisted that he “never stopped believing” across his tough 2022 campaign since it was revealed that Suzuki would quit MotoGP at the end of the current term, the outfit having failed to reach the podium since April’s United States GP at the Circuit of the Americas – a poor run of form that saw Rins fall from being an early title contender to outside the top ten in points prior to the weekend.
“For sure since the news went out that Suzuki would not continue in the championship we haven’t had many good results, I don’t know whether it was bad luck or something, but we also had many crashes and I broke my hand,” added Rins.
“After that I think the key has been to never stop believing, in many races I’ve had incredible race but I started so far back on the grid, we started far back here but going through Q1 and Q2 gave me a lot of confidence and motivation for the race.”
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