New year, new life, that’s how it is again for Álex Rins who this year is with Yamaha and intends to continue his adaptation to a new bike in Portimão, hoping that throughout the year he can take advantage of the concessions and his growing confidence to improve his performance day by day. Whether he will be better in Portugal is currently an unknown.
‘Portimão could be better for me. I know the bike more and more, the team knows me better and every kilometer I do is productive and interesting to ride in a better way. It’s the first European GP and everything will happen more easily,’ started the new recruit of the Japanese team.
Rins is unable to make predictions about what might happen, whether positive or negative: ‘All the competitors are very close, that is true but we are still far away. In Qatar we gave our best and we were at the top, and that means we have room to improve but in terms of race pace we finished very far from the fastest, around 20 or 25 seconds, I don’t remember well. We need to improve, and the team is working hard to give us a better bike. Let’s see how far we will be on this track, and tomorrow we might be closer or farther than in Qatar’.
Regarding the tests scheduled for the end of the GP, the Spanish rider revealed: ‘We will test but I still don’t know what we will test, but it should be interesting because after the GP weekend, where you can’t test much, you are gathering information, we will test on Monday’.
And he continued: ‘If I am going to be more relaxed [regarding the development of the bike and the possibility of changes throughout the year]… more or less. It is what it is and if you panic you may not have a clear head to ride as well as you know. It is true that there are parts that we will test, I assume, that we may not be able to use in the next GP, because they must be prototype parts, but it gives me confidence to improve, to do more laps with the bike, to work better with the team. We are in a phase of understanding how everything works: in Qatar we had many difficulties with the front tire because of the bike’s configuration, this bike has some adjustments more focused on Fabio [Quartararo], because he was the one who ‘made’ the bike for him, it’s normal, and even though we have a similar style we are a bit different, and I need to make the bike a bit more to my liking’.
