Maverick Vinales is genius and madness, a great talent sometimes not fully exploited. Like in Yamaha, four and a half years that began with the dream of winning the World Championship and ended with his sacking, for trying to break the engine of his M1 in the Styria GP. The Spanish rider recounted that chapter of his career in a documentary made by DAZN Spain, 'Maverick: Dos vidas' the title.
He started from 2016, his first season on the Japanese bike: "I remember that I came into Yamaha like a rocket. The only thing I asked for was to be world champion, I didn't care about anything else. When I first got on the M1, I fell in love with it at the first moment. Everything came easy to me. I said, 'I 've never ridden a bike that went so well. Don't touch it. It was the one that Jorge had left."
At the beginning of the season, in Qatar, however, the M1 that had been Lorenzo's was not there.
"I said, where is that bike? - recounted Maverick - They told me that we had to race with the new one. I still felt good with that one too, I won the first race and the second one, in Le Mans I won after a great fight against Valentino Rossi, it was one of the best days of my life. At Montmeló a sea of changes started. I tried five different chassis, I couldn't understand anything. At Assen I raced with a chassis I had only done two laps with and of course I crashed. Then they started changing things on the bike and everything went downhill. That year made me very frustrated. That was my year, the year when I was the strongest and the others were not so strong. Mentally it hurt me because I expected to win. There is nothing worse than expecting something and not doing it. No one had my speed that year."
The story did not change in 2018.
"In Jerez I tested with the 2016 bike, the one Zarco was riding, and I was half a second faster," Vinales continued, "At Sepang there was another new bike that I didn't like at all and it was one of my worst years with Yamaha."
At the beginning of 2020, Maverick was in low spirits.
"I decided to participate in the season, although very reluctantly," he confessed, "At Jerez we had problems with the engine valves, and I was the one who had the most." Then, in Austria, he was left without brakes. "The easiest year in which to win the championship, was the one in which we made the most mistakes. They didn't pay much attention to me, if they had listened to me, I would be world champion today, I'm 100 percent sure."
This brings us to 2021, the season in which the sacking occurred.
"I felt unbeatable. I don't know what happened, that my bike was going backwards. I won the first race single-handed, but by the second race the bike was different. I started to suspect that there was something going on," Vinales said, "In Austria I didn't try to break the engine, but to make them understand that I couldn't take it anymore. I was fed up with that situation."