No one in their right mind gave a penny for a victory for Honda this weekend in the GP of the Americas. Neither Álex Rins himself, a brilliant winner on one of his favorite circuits, nor his team leader, an exultant Lucio Cecchinello. They would never have imagined that they could be so high up with a motorcycle that came to the United States in last place in the constructors’ championship. There were also no precedents to hold on to: since 2018, only Marc Márquez had managed to place the brand with the golden wing at the top of the podium.
After a long drought of two and a half years, Rins demonstrated, without counting on the full support of the Japanese factory, by any means, that they should listen to him carefully from now on. “Wasted”, as he himself defined himself on Thursday in Texas, without being able to count on the same parts as his colleagues in the neighboring workshop, the one of the official team, the 27-year-old Barcelona pilot gave a burst of joy of incalculable value to his new squad.
“We are all delighted. It has been an enormous job by Álex, but also by Honda and the whole team. It’s like a dream, I still can’t believe it, ”Cecchinello shared, jubilant at the 100th podium for his structure. “We are all very passionate, but it is also a very stressful job. Sometimes you need this, a good result, to motivate you again ”, he added. It had been five years since a Honda satellite had won a race -in the 2018 Argentine GP with Cal Crutchlow-, a completely unexpected situation that came on a day where the other three motorcycles of the brand, with Márquez out due to injury, they ended up on the ground. “It is the light at the end of the tunnel, although this does not mean that we have left the tunnel. We still have work to do, but it means a lot. This shows that we are on the right path ”, assured the former Italian pilot and head of the LCR, his own project that he founded in 1996.
Fabio Quartararo and Luca Marini, fascinated to see their colleague in the top drawer, questioned the Barcelonan in depth before the podium ceremony. “Where did you make the difference, where were you stronger?” Valentino Rossi’s brother asked him, unable to catch him on the Ducati. “In sector two, he was very fast there,” anticipated the Frenchman from Yamaha. “Yes, especially in the chicanes,” Rins acknowledged. His rivals tried to get more information out of him, but he didn’t want to give them the secret ingredient either. “You’re worse than your brother!” He snapped at the Italian.
Since his early days at Suzuki, Rins has been regarded as one of the finest riders on the grid, a heritage of traditional style in the intermediate class. “Álex is a type of pilot who doesn’t like the electronics filter. He prefers to have more power on the bike and all the power delivered on his wrist”, analyzes Cecchinello. “Without a doubt, his style is totally opposite, more typical of Moto2. He makes the rear wheel spin less. me and joan [Mir] we try to stop the bike and lift it up as soon as possible, open the throttle to the maximum, but that causes us too much wheel slip, so we don’t gain anything”, says Takaaki Nakagami, his teammate. The ability to win with a less aggressive style than that of Marc Márquez, the only rider capable of extracting the maximum performance from the Honda in recent times, gives a breath of fresh air to the engineers and opens a new way to develop a motorcycle stagnant since the ordeal of injuries to the eighth world champion began.
“I’m building my base and it’s working pretty well. We took a step forward in Argentina and another one here”, argued the protagonist of the weekend. “I would say that with this base we see the potential to stay in the front group, but I don’t know if we can repeat a result like this,” said his team leader. His taste for the layout -he won here in each of the three World Cup categories- explains a good part of the magnificent result, but from within the manufacturer they point out that they have found reasons to be optimistic. “We have found something on the bike that I think can help us a lot in the future. It’s the best feeling I’ve had so far”, pointed out Joan Mir, from the official team, despite ending up with a crash over the weekend.
Rins still does not want to throw the bells on the fly. “You have to go to the following races with your feet on the ground. We are starting from scratch, as this is still a new bike for me”, he added without saying anything about whether he really believes that the Honda is once again a competitive enough machine to challenge its European rivals. In the Spanish GP, which takes place in Jerez from April 28 to 30, the factory of the golden wing hopes to be able to confirm its step forward. With luck, in addition, they will be able to count on Marc Márquez again, absent due to injury in the last two appointments.
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