Rins holds back Suzuki soft tyre pace

Alex Rins says he didn’t use the soft Michelin tyres in a late lap attack during Friday practice as he preferred to focus on his own Suzuki programme heading into the Spanish MotoGP.

The Americas MotoGP race winner was a noticeable absentee from the top 10 at the end of FP2, down in 16th place in the afternoon session, while on the combined results the Spanish rider is 12th overall thanks to his FP1 efforts.

The Suzuki rider confirmed he hasn’t touched his soft rear tyre allocation at Jerez yet, while he used one soft front tyre across the two practice sessions, which leaves him confident of finding the vital lap time over a qualifying-style run during FP3 to break into the top 10 and with it an automatic Q2 spot.

The pair of Suzuki riders have struggled in qualifying so far this season with both Rins and Joan Mir demonstrating superior race pace to climb through the field but Rins remains unmoved by any qualifying concerns.

“We finished in P12 in the combined times so not far away from Q2,” Rins said. “Ttomorrow we will focus on the soft in the rear as everybody used one, two or three soft tyres but we didn’t use it we only used medium and hard so we have tyres to do one lap.

“We focused on trying the tyres as we have, on this track, an allocation which has a lot of tyres and in the front and rear we have two kind of hard tyres. I tried both. A lot of tyres. We focused on that area.

“I think in the conditions this afternoon with the wind and hot, but not super-hot, it was not good for me [on the hard tyres]. When I tried I was riding slow so during the weekend if we see no high temperatures we won’t use it.”

Rins also shook off expectations being set higher for him following his maiden MotoGP victory which came last time out in Austin and says the targets and mentality inside his Suzuki team remain unchanged.

“I think for me and the team the expectations are the same,” he said. “When we arrived at Jerez we had the same ambition and everything is the same.

“The people outside maybe think ‘okay now Alex wins in Austin so now he will win in Jerez’, it is difficult and we need to work hard.”