Vinales: If Yamaha had listened to me, I would have already been MotoGP champion

Maverick Vinales believes that if Yamaha had followed his advice in the early years of their partnership he would have already won a title in MotoGP.

Vinales was chosen to replace the three-time champion george lorenzo He impressed for the team during his two seasons at Yamaha in 2017, in the junior classes and in MotoGP with Suzuki.

The Spaniard made a stormy debut on the M1 with the Iwata-based brand, winning the opening two races in Qatar and Argentina and followed that up with another win at the fifth round at Le Mans.

However, he could not win another race in the remainder of the season and ultimately finished third in the standings behind the champion. mark marquez (Honda) and finished second Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati).

Now, speaking in a documentary produced by Spanish broadcaster Dazon, Vinales revealed that Yamaha went in a different direction with the development of the M1, despite the bike not requiring any changes.

He believes that this cost him his chance to win the title.

“When I joined Yamaha, I came in like a rocket,” he explained Manmaouji: Two Lives“I come with a clear idea, a clear objective and that’s the only thing I asked for from Yamaha: I want to become world champion.

“I don’t want to be anything else, don’t let me be anything else because that’s what I want to be, I’m not interested in anything else.

“When I got on the Yamaha at the Valencia test, I fell in love with it. I asked him not to touch it. I wanted this, which was the bike that George had left.

“(I said:) Bring me this bike to Qatar, I’m going to win the world championship with it. But when I reached Sepang (for pre-season testing), ‘Where is that bike?’

“I won the first race, I won the second race, I won at Le Mans, it was one of the best days of my life, I won the fight against my idol, valentino rossi,

“But there was a wave of change in Barcelona. I didn’t understand anything. I told them not to touch the bike,” said Vinales, who never said Yamaha would choose to follow the path blazed by teammate Rossi.

After an acrimonious split with Yamaha midway through the 2021 season, Vinales found new life at Aprilia that same year and ultimately returned to winning ways at this season’s Americas GP.

he will Tech3 go to KTM in 2025 And will receive factory equipment from the Austrian brand.

Vinales, who was the only non-Ducati rider to win a Grand Prix this year, said he still had aspirations of winning the championship, but felt it would be difficult to achieve that goal with Satellite. Ducati Team,

“What’s the next challenge I want? The challenge for me is to win the World Championship,” he said.

“Now I have come to the conclusion that there are two sides to it: either you are a challenger or you go to the dark side. Either you go for KTM or Ducati.

“It is very difficult to win in Ducati. How do you beat the official team? It’s very complicated, you have the same bike, but not the same weapons. So I had only one option, to move to KTM and be a challenger.”

Comparing the three manufacturers he has competed with so far, the 29-year-old said: “Suzuki was pure passion, Yamaha was a ‘business’ and Aprilia was a mixture.

“Aprilia is a brand that lives in racing and in this aspect they brought back to me the passion I had for motorcycling.”

Additional reporting by German Garcia Casanova