Alex Rins will miss this weekend’s upcoming MotoGP Malaysian Grand Prix, and his LCR Honda team has named Iker Lecuona as his replacement.
Lecuona’s Malaysian appearance will be his fifth in Grand Prix racing this season, having replaced Marc Marquez in the Repsol Honda Team at the Spanish Grand Prix, Joan Mir in the Repsol team at the Dutch TT and Rins in the LCR team at the British Grand Prix, Austrian Grand Prix, and Catalan Grand Prix. His position in Malaysia in place of Rins was confirmed by the below social media post, which also confirmed Rins will miss the Qatar Grand Prix.
Rins has also been replaced by Stefan Bradl at the Dutch TT, when Lecuona was replacing Mir, and by Takumi Takahashi at the San Marino Grand Prix, when Lecuona was busy racing the French round of WorldSBK for the factory HRC team.
Rins has been more or less out of action since his MotoGP Sprint crash at the Italian Grand Prix back in the beginning of June. He previously attempted to return to action at the Japanese Grand Prix, but pulled out after Friday due to continued pain in the leg broken in Italy.
At the next race in Indonesia, Rins was able to race to ninth place, but he then had to pull out of the Australian Grand Prix the week after and, in the days after the race in Phillip Island, Rins announced he would take another surgery on his leg. That surgery kept him out of the Thai Grand Prix, where he was not replaced, and will also keep him out of this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix and next weekend's race in Qatar.
Whether Rins will be back before the end of the season at all remains uncertain, with only the season finale in Valencia remaining after Malaysia and Qatar, with the three forming the season-ending triple header.
Rins has been the only Honda rider to win a MotoGP race in 2023, when he took victory at the Grand Prix of the Americas back in April, but he will leave for Yamaha in 2024.
