Alex Rins has admitted he is still feeling after-effects from the serious leg injury that severely hindered his 2023 campaign as he prepares to make his debut for Yamaha Racing in the 2024 MotoGP World Championship.

The Spaniard joins 2021 MotoGP World Champion Fabio Quartararo in the factory Yamaha outfit after spending a single season with LCR Honda, which followed on from his stint at Suzuki, with whom he’d raced from his MotoGP debut in 2017.

It means he arrives at Yamaha with the unusual insight of having competed - and won grands prix - with the manufacturer’s two Japanese rivals.

Perhaps more crucially, Rins has experience of having competed with Suzuki, the only other firm using an inline four-cylinder mechanical architecture outside of Yamaha. 

“I am fully ready,” he commented. “ I am so excited to start this new adventure, because it is a dream come true to come into this team, one with a lot of fame and history in the past. I am super excited.

“My first impressions of the team and the test we did in Valencia, it was so good, I feel so comfortable with the team.

“They look like they want to improve the bike, so I am ready to bring all of my experience of the MotoGP bike to them and to show this bike is competitive."

In the short-term, however, six-time MotoGP race winner Rins is focused on getting comfortable with the Yamaha M1 and complete his recovery from his lingering leg injury.

Rins missed a sizeable portion of the 2023 MotoGP season after seriously breaking his leg in an accident during the Italian MotoGP weekend at Mugello. It’s an ailment he admits does still affect him, but he insists he is otherwise ready to get back to racing.

“I feel really, I feel recovered. Still sometimes working, the change of the pressures and weather affects me a bit on the injury.

“It takes a lot of time to recover, but this winter I started to do normal training and also I jump on the R1M, to prepare for the circuit. I didn’t feel any extra pain, which is so important.”