If Yamaha had listened to me, I would already be MotoGP champion

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

Vinales was selected to replace three-time champion Jorge Lorenzo at Yamaha in 2017, having impressed the squad in junior classes and during his two seasons in MotoGP with Suzuki.

The Spaniard made a storming start on the M1 with the Iwata-based brand, winning the opening two races in Qatar and Argentina and following that up with another victory in the fifth round at Le Mans.

However, he didn’t win another race in the remainder of the season and ultimately wound up third in the standings, behind champion Marc Marquez (Honda) and second-placed Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati).

Now, speaking in a documentary produced by Spanish broadcaster Dazn, Vinales revealed that Yamaha went in a different direction with the development of the M1 despite his insistence that the bike didn’t need any changes.

This, he feels, cost him a shot at winning the title.

“When I joined Yamaha, I came in like a rocket,” he explained in Maverick: two lives. “I arrived with a clear idea, a clear objective and that’s the only thing I asked Yamaha for: I want to be world champion.

“I don’t want to be anything else, don’t make me be anything else because I want to be this, 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 them not to touch it. I wanted this one, which was the bike that Jorge left.

“[I said:] Bring me this bike to Qatar, with this I’m going to win the world championship. But when I got to Sepang [for the pre-season test], ‘where is that bike?’

“I won the first race, I won the second, I won at Le Mans, it was one of the best days of my life, I won a battle against my idol, Valentino Rossi.

“But in Barcelona there was a wave of changes. I didn’t understand anything. I told them not to touch the bike,” added Vinales, who at no point said Yamaha preferred to follow the path indicated by team-mate Rossi.

Following an acrimonious split with Yamaha in the middle of the 2021 season, Vinales found new life at Aprilia the same year and finally returned to victory lane at this season’s Americas GP.

He will move over to Tech3 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 harbours aspirations of winning the championship, but feels it would have been difficult to achieve that target with a satellite Ducati team.

“What is the next challenge I want? For me the challenge is to win the world championship,” he said.

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

“At Ducati it is very difficult to win. How are you going to beat the official team? It is very complicated, you have the same bike, but not the same weapons. So I only had one option, to go to KTM and be the challenger.”

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

“Aprilia is a brand that lives racing and in that aspect they gave me back a bit of the passion I had for motorcycling.”

Additional reporting by German Garcia Casanova