In the latest ‘worst kept secret’ move the Spaniard Alex Rins has been confirmed to be riding for LCR Honda next season. Rins was forced to move team after his current team Suzuki decided they hated all forms of motorcycle racing and instead wanted to focus on building terrible cars (except the Jimny…that’s still awesome)
But, unless he has shares in a surgical cast business, is this a bad move for our loveable Alex? Will the Honda be his golden ticket to a season parking pass at A&E?
We explore why this could be a painful move…
Rins bins
When it comes to crashing Alex Rins could practically qualify as a British rider. The curly headed Spaniard spent most of last season either falling off and injuring himself or sat at home recovering from falling off. And when he wasn’t he was crashing his bicycle into parked cars.
But all that changed for Alex at the start of this season. Suddenly the once gravel-happy Suzuki rider stayed upright and, even more impressively, was an early title contender. Horrah! Surely nothing could go wrong now…
Then Suzuki decided to quit. And a stunned Rins was reset to his factory settings and started falling off again. A lot.
Luckily the LCR team know a thing or two about crashes. Both current riders Alex Marquez and Takaaki Nakagami love to fall off. And let’s not forget for many seasons the team had the King of Crashes Cal Crutchlow throwing it into the vegetation every race. Indeed it’s said that LCR receive a rebate from Dorna each year for all the gravel returned to the circuit owners.
But will this just make crashes more acceptable for Alex?
2022 Injury Rating: 👨🦽👨🦽👨🦽👨🦽
None-classy chassis
Honda knows how to build a four-stroke engine. From their legendary five-cylinder RC211V that was too expensive for any other manufacturer to replicate to their infamous ‘GP2’ F1 engine the evil Japanese company have proven time and time again they know how to make a powerful engine.
But they’re not quite as good at building a chassis. Up until last year Honda used a simple technique in MotoGP to overcome their woeful skills – employ the best riders to ride around the problems and keep their gobs shut. Rossi, Stoner and recently Marc Marquez have been the cream of the crop to ride around any handling issues whilst the other Honda riders all scratched their heads.
But after Marc’s injury in 2020 Honda decided they needed to change things. So, with a load of money saved from not paying staff during the covid break, the evil HRC decided to show the world that with enough money and casual death threats their engineers could build a world class chassis. And failed. Badly.
Currently the handling of Honda’s MotoGP bike handling is so bad that Marc ‘ride around the problem’ Marquez has given up on it choosing to have invasive surgery instead as a safer option. Meanwhile the also-ran Honda riders are all absolutely hating the bike claiming it’s unpredictable and smells odd.
So, how will Rins manage on a dangerous handling bike given he can easily fall off a sweet handling one?
2022 Injury Rating: 👨🦽👨🦽👨🦽👨🦽👨🦽
Unsatisfactory factory
Alex has had the great fortune to have been a factory rider throughout his MotoGP career. If the Spaniard felt something wasn’t working or needed improving he could ask the engineers at Suzuki directly…who in turn would then ask Silvan Guintoli for his opinion.
But all that has gone now that he’s at LCR Honda. For a start no rider can tell HRC where improvements are needed – as according to the minutes from the last AGM the RC213V has no faults whatsoever and is the pinnacle of precision engineering. It also has a ‘delicately pleasant’ Umami fragrance.
Even the great Marc Marquez isn’t allowed to point out the millions of crappy aspects of Honda’s perfect machine. So Alex has no chance. He’ll be stuck riding what he’s given.
Will having to ride around his problems cause more crashes?
2022 Injury Rating: 👨🦽👨🦽👨🦽
Switch-twitch
Rins has been with Suzuki since he first joined MotoGP in 2017. In that time he’s seen the team go from ‘plucky also-rans’ to a bike that could win a world title in the skilled hands of someone else.
Having only ridden for only one manufacturer for six seasons (four seasons if you deduct races missed due to injury) Alex will be forced to ride a bike that’s completely alien to him. Gone will be the sweet handling machine and replaced with one that hates the world more than a sober Scotsman at a charity event.
Will the change be too hard for Alex and will he then push too hard to compensate?
2022 Injury Rating: 👨🦽👨🦽👨🦽👨🦽
Naka whacker
Takaaki Nakagami was hired by Honda to ride in MotoGP in 2018 after impressing them with his unique riding style. That style mainly involved him riding his track scooter back to his Minka to collect his passport to prove his birth place. He was carefully then dumped into the LCR Honda team and not allowed anywhere near a factory Repsol bike.
Since then Takaaki’s been pounding in the mundane results race-after-race firmly cementing himself as the ‘potato of MotoGP’. But along with his dreary results (none of which anyone can remember ever) the Japanese noodle-borer also has a hidden talent – dangerous riding.
“You can teach a fast rider to stop crashing but not a slow rider to be fast. A slow dangerous rider though needs his head caving in just outside Woolloomooloo” Mick Doohan
This year Nakagami’s outdone himself skilfully upsetting the entire paddock with his wild antics, dangerous riding and ‘new born chicken’ haircut. And no one has been more angered by Takaaki’s actions than Alex Rins himself.
And rightly so. Rins has been knocked off twice already this year by the treacherous Jap before Alex had chance to fall off in the race unaided. The last crash saw the Spaniard break his wrist and was forced to miss subsequent races.
So it’s established that Rins hates Takaaki Nakagami. But what will that do to the Spaniard’s already questionable upright-skills if they’re competing teammates?
Luckily for Alex there’s a very good chance that the boring token Japanese rider will be replaced at the end of the season by Ai Ogura – who’s a different, boring token Japanese rider.
But if Taka stays will Alex’s hatred fuel him to more errors?
2022 Injury Rating: 👨🦽👨🦽