Still trying to make the most of his Yamaha M1, Álex Rins is working with his team to get the best bike and yesterday, during the Warm Up session, what seemed good turned into a disaster in the race.
The rider who last year managed to give Honda its only victory of the season, exactly in Austin, did not perform as well this time: ‘The start was very good, quite nice, and we gained eight positions in the first lap, but then… Today [yesterday] in Warm Up we tried a completely different bike, to see if that is the way we have to go. The Warm Up with only ten minutes, four laps, I didn’t feel as much difference as the day before,’ he began to say, explaining later that there were some improvements that he tried to carry over to the main race:
– Maybe release the brakes a little better in the slow corners, corners where we struggled yesterday [Saturday], so we decided to keep the setup for the race and, honestly, it was a big mistake because, usually, our bike is quite heavy in direction changes.
Next, he explained how he felt on the bike itself: ‘In the race, with this setup, it was even worse, even heavier, so I was losing everything when changing direction and then I made a small mistake in turn 15, where there is some bump in the brakes and maybe I hit a bump with a little more pressure on the front brake and lost the front end’.
