After Toprak Razgatlioglu, who recently got behind the wheel of a Skoda Fabia R5, another Yamaha rider has recently been testing his skills in a rally car.
On the icy track in Andorra, Alex Rins proved that he knows his way around on four wheels even when grip is at zero, finishing the GSeries race, which also featured emerging rally star Nil Solans, in third place.
Dividing his time between the gym and snow sports, the Spaniard is doing everything he can to prepare himself as best he can, so as to have a better chance of redeeming his career after a rather difficult 2025 season, which ended with him finishing in 19th place overall with just 68 points. This is nothing compared to the performance of his teammate Fabio Quartararo, who finished 9th with an impressive 201 points.
Able to break into the top 10 only in the Le Mans Sprint and then in the German, Indonesian, and Australian GPs, it was at Sachsenring that he experienced his darkest moment.
"I think it was the toughest weekend of my career. Not even in my first year as a rookie or coming back from injury did I suffer so much," he said, highlighting the two main problems with the M1: lack of speed in corners and lack of rear grip.
Contributing to his poor feeling with the bike and a performance well below expectations, especially when compared to El Diablo, the fractures to his tibia and fibula sustained at Mugello in the 2023 Sprint, which forced him to miss most of the remaining races, and the broken right wrist and foot suffered after a violent highside at the first corner of the 2024 Dutch GP. It must be said that the Barcelona rider is used to recovering from setbacks. Think of 2020 when he was forced to withdraw in Spain after dislocating his shoulder and breaking his right humerus during qualifying; or the following year when he crashed during a bike training session and broke his right radius, preventing him from taking part in the Catalan round.
Despite broken bones and having to start from scratch, looking ahead to 2026 and the eagerly awaited technical innovation represented by the V4 engine, introduced by Yamaha with the aim of closing the gap on Ducati, Aprilia, and KTM, his spirits remain high. "I feel much better when braking compared to the inline four-cylinder. In terms of speed, something is still missing, but that's normal. My goal is to try to find traction," he commented after testing the new bike in Valencia last November, a preview of the shakedown at the end of January in Sepang.
Never a world champion in the minor categories, but with two second places (Moto3 in 2013 with KTM and Moto2 in 2015 with Kalex) and two third places (Moto3 in 2014 with Honda and Moto2 in 2016 with Kalex) behind him, since his move to MotoGP in 2017 with Suzuki, he has only made it into the top 3 in 2020, again with the "S" brand, in a year made as unusual as it was atypical by the pandemic. Since then, he has often struggled and has never really stood out. Not even with Honda in the troubled 2023 season or with Yamaha from 2024, which, despite everything, has decided to renew its confidence in him for 2026 and risks not reconfirming him for 2027, despite his experience, when the top class will undergo a revolution with the conversion of bikes from 1000 cc to 850.