MotoGP Phillip Island: ‘Never stop believing’ - Rins

With just three races left of 2022, Alex Rins provided the perfect present on Sunday as Suzuki Ecstar prepares to bow out of MotoGP, victory at Phillip Island.

And what a way to do it. After an epic island classic and four rider duel which went down to the wire Rins had both new series leader Pecco Bagnaia and eight-time world champion Marc Marquez firmly on his wheels. Just over two tenths covered the entirety of the podium after 27 laps of the unique circuit with seven riders within a second of the Spaniard at the chequered flag.

Completing a successful set, the 26-year-old has now claimed an Australian victory in every Grand Prix class, after his 2013 and 2015 wins in Moto3 and Moto2 respectively.

“Sincerely I’m so happy to get the victory here, Moto3, Moto2, MotoGP and also we deserved this one!” Rins said on Sunday after launching from tenth on the grid to claim the overall trophy. “We worked quite hard to get it.

“During the race was not that easy. The pace was not so high, but I was feeling quite well, managing the rear tyre, finding a good traction and lap by lap I was overtaking someone until I arrived there in the top four, top three.

“At that point I realised that they were riding so slow, in ’30’s, so I put in to the front to see if I was able to open a bit of a gap but immediately Pecco overtook me on the straight. So then I decided to stay behind him to save a little bit of the rear tyre. Going into the last lap on the straight, I knew that if I was starting quite close to him I had some options to overtook him exiting on the first corner, so we did it.

“I’m super happy because the team deserves, all the Hamamatsu staff also, they work really hard. And you know, is the last one for Suzuki in the Island so