Alex Rins details “impressive” Yamaha winter effort with 2025 MotoGP bike
Spaniard speaks about “all new” parts brought for testing
Alex Rins has detailed all of the new items Yamaha has developed over the winer to bring to the first MotoGP test of 2025, with the Spaniard “quite impressed” by the effort.
Yamaha comes into the 2025 season with a renewed push to develop its way back to the front of the grid, having endured back-to-back winless campaigns in MotoGP.
While all focus has been on the impending V4 project, Yamaha hasn’t taken its eye off the current bike it has.
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Alex Rins, entering his second season with Yamaha, says the Japanese marque will have a new engine, chassis, swingarm and fairing among other things to try this week at the Sepang shakedown and official test.
“It’s so difficult to say to you that we are going to fight for the victory from the first race, because it’s not true,” he told Crash.net.
“Right now, we have the potential to improve the bike. Yamaha worked really hard this winter.
“So, I’m really excited tomorrow to jump on the bike for day two of the shakedown.
“They worked really hard. They’ve brought engine, chassis, swingarm, fairing, many items - all new. So, I’m quite impressed.
“We will do the back-to-back [in testing]. We will start with the standard bike that we finished with in Montmelo, but already with the new chassis that we tried at the test.
“So, that was our base bike. From that we will work on a new engine, new electronics, another new chassis. So, quite a busy winter it will be.”
Rins underwent surgery in December to have the leg he badly broke in 2023 evaluated, though says he is “feeling perfect” despite attending Yamaha’s launch with a crutch.
“I make a surgery this December, to check how everything was,” he said.
“The surgery was to see how the bone was recovering. They open, I had a little bit of bone because the tibia was not 100% healed.
“But, honestly, now it’s two months and I’m feeling perfect, super good.
“Honestly same as before the surgery because before the surgery I was good enough.
“So, now I am having this [crutch] to remove a little bit of weight from the leg because with all the metal I have inside - you remember I was working a little bit not perfect - so, this is because I have some pain in my ankle.
“I still have all the metal, so for this reason I have this [crutch].
“But it’s not a problem to ride on the bike. I did a really good pre-season at home, training, mental [preparation] also. I did four, five days on the R1 at Jerez and Almeria.”
Quotes provided by Crash MotoGP Editor Peter McLaren
