Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team Principal Lin Jarvis has confirmed that exciting youngsters Maverick Vinales and Alex Rins have been highlighted as potential future riders reports Motorsport.com.
The silly season for 2017 has already started before the first race of 2016 as the contracts of nearly all the riders occupying the top seats in MotoGP come to an end this year. The sport faces its biggest shake-up for years as at least one seat at every team is up for grabs and the factories look to which riders will take them forward in the next era of the sport. There are other questions to be answered too which will help decide which seats remain vacant.
Who will partner Johann Zarco as KTM become the sixth factory team in 2017? Will Valentino Rossi continue to race beyond the end of the year?
On track Yamaha had a highly successful 2015 with Jorge Lorenzo and Rossi finishing first and second in the Riders’ Championship, winning the Manufacturers’ Championship (beating Honda 407 points to 355) and Movistar Yamaha beating Repsol Honda by 202 points in the Teams’ Championship. Off the track was a different story though as the relationship between both riders broke down once more just as it had before Rossi left for Ducati at the end of 2012. The final straw appeared to come in the fallout from Rossi’s Malaysia incident with Marc Marquez when it was reported that Lorenzo was appealing to the stewards to disqualify his teammate. It was rumoured at the time that Yamaha did not take kindly to their own rider appearing to take sides with a Honda rival even if it was in the interest of his own individual championship battle. The waters appear calmer now but it would take a brave man to predict a 2017 line-up with Rossi and Lorenzo in the same team.
Vinales had a fantastic rookie season with Suzuki in 2015 and is regarded as one of the brightest young stars in MotoGP.
Jarvis said, “Maverick Vinales already has MotoGP experience – I don’t know the details of his contract with Suzuki but I suspect that it was for two years with an option for 2017. He’s a very good rider so it’s normal that he can attract the attention of Yamaha and the other factory teams in MotoGP”.
The 20-year-old Spaniard burst onto the scene in 2011 winning just his fourth 125cc World Championship race at Le Mans in France from third on the grid. He went on to win three other races that year for his Blusens Aprilia team and finished third in the championship, a feat he repeated in 2012 when he secured five wins. That season was tainted when a dispute with his Blusens Avintia FTR-Honda team with three races to go effectively handed the title to Sandro Cortese and lost Vinales the runner-up spot to Luis Salom as he withdrew from the Malaysian round. He raced the final two rounds for the team before joining Team Calvo KTM for 2013 where he won only three races but claimed the Moto3 World Championship thanks to twelve other podium finishes.
His fantastic record meant he was only off the podium at two rounds and that was when he finished fourth at Silverstone and fifth at Sepang. His rookie Moto2 season for Paginas Amarillas HP 40 Kalex was equally impressive as he won the second race of the 2014 season in Austin and also three out of the last five races of the year. He finished third in the championship behind Tito Rabat and Mika Kallio when a podium in the final round (Valencia) would have seen him finish second. After just one season on Moto2, he was snapped up by the Suzuki factory team as the Japanese made a return to MotoGP. He was once again rookie of the year as he had been in 125cc and Moto2, finishing twelfth in the standings with a season-best sixth at both Barcelona and Philip Island. His performances though, especially qualifying second at Barcelona, have shown the bigger factory teams that he would be an excellent asset for the future.
Rins, like Vinales before him, was the rookie of the year in 2015 in Moto2. He was one of the top riders in Moto3 for two years before that and is seen as another future race winner and potential champion in MotoGP.
Jarvis said, “I think that Alex Rins made the right decision to stay in Moto2 for a second year. Without a doubt, he’s a talented rider and a good candidate to ride for Yamaha in future. He is of course on our wish list. He made a few mistakes in 2015 but proved very fast”.
Rins is similar to Vinales in that he is a 20-year-old Spaniard who has had three years in the lower class and one in Moto2 to date. He hasn’t been as successful but has certainly shown great potential. In his first season for Estrella Galicia 0,0 Suter-Honda in 2012, he finished fifth behind Cortese, Salom, Vinales and Danny Kent. He had a podium in the fourth race at Le Mans but it was the only one of the season. The following year the same team switched to KTM machinery and he was involved in a titanic title battle with Salom and eventual champion Vinales. He took his maiden win at the second round in Austin and won five more times that season. Going into the last round in Valencia all three riders were capable of coming away with the title but Vinales won the race and Rins finished as runner-up. In 2014, he was in another championship battle with team-mate Alex Marquez and Jack Miller but finished third despite winning two races at Silverstone and Misano. He moved up to Moto2 last season and was fast from the start, finishing in the top four in the opening three races including two podiums. He won two races at Indianapolis at Philip Island and finished second in the standings behind runaway winner Johann Zarco by finishing second to Tito Rabat in the final race in Valencia.
