Alex Rins has earned plenty of plaudits after his stunning win at the Americas GP over the weekend. Not only does it add the Spaniard’s roll of honour with his new team LCR Honda, but it also sees him join an exclusive club.
During his time in the premier class, Rins has stood on the top step six times, five of which were during his time with the GSX-RR from Suzuki, while his most recent win came aboard Honda’s RC213V. That means he has now taken MotoGP™ race wins with two different Japanese manufacturers - a feat that has only been achieved three times since the inception of the MotoGP™ era.
Max Biaggi was the first to do it, taking victory at the 2002 Czech GP in Brno with Yamaha, before securing his first win with Honda at the British GP one year later. Funnily enough, the Italian also had the perfect view of the second rider to do it when Valentino Rossi took his maiden win with Yamaha after a stunning race long battle with Biaggi at the 2004 South Africa GP. It was a debut win for ‘The Doctor’, who had won a hat-trick of World Championships with Honda before the move, while that victory also saw him become the first, and to date, the only rider to win back-to-back races with different manufacturers and gave him the perfect platform to build towards a fourth successive Championship.
Maverick Viñales (Aprilia Racing) is the third rider to have done it. Like Rins, Top Gun took his first MotoGP™ win with Suzuki when he was victorious at the 2016 British GP. A move to Yamaha followed the year after, and like his then-factory teammate Rossi, he took a debut victory on opening night in Qatar, his first of eight wins with the Iwata factory. Viñales himself is chasing another little piece of history in 2023, hoping to become the first rider to win MotoGP™ races aboard three different bikes, and he is in direct competition with Jack Miller (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing).
Then came Rins’ win at the Circuit of the Americas. It’s a track that the Barcelona native has a love affair with, taking his first-ever Moto3™, Moto2™ and MotoGP™ wins there, and now he can add his maiden Honda victory to the list of Texas successes. It’s not just a significant victory for Rins, but for Honda as a whole as they see a rider not named Marc Marquez take the chequered flag first for the first time since 2018, when Cal Crutchlow won in Argentina, which was incidentally LCR’s last premier class race win.
Having secured a place in history, Rins and LCR Honda are now looking ahead to the MotoGP™ Guru by Gryfyn de España on April 28th with the hope of adding further accolades to their already impressive 2023 collection.