The Spaniard got off to a mediocre start and was left vulnerable to attacks from behind, notably from a fast-charging Francesco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin, which forced Vinales to pick his bike up mid-corner in turn one which resulted in him losing several positions in the opening few corners.

However, the Aprilia man was on a mission and did not lose sight of the victory. With his superior pace, Vinales made up positions one lap after the other to find himself back in the lead.

“Feels like I’m in Gotham City!” Maverick Vinales said after his first Aprilia win. “I said yesterday that I’m honestly dreaming. But we must dream, we must believe, and we must have confidence.”

“Closing this circle gives a lot of drive to continue working this hard. Obviously, it is not easy. We spent long, long nights thinking and overthinking about what I have to do to get back to winning races. Finally, I did it so I’m super happy to never give up and keep focus.”

Speaking about the issues at the start…

“This morning I had an issue with the clutch, and the team was quite worried so they didn’t want to touch anything. I had the same issues in the race but I was not bad, I was second or third so that was okay.”

“But I saw Pecco enter and push me very wide but also because Jorge was also inside so that was a race incident and after that, I was like ‘No come on, no!’

“This time, no. So I kept concentrated and I kept believing what I was able to do.”

“The way I was recovering the gap so quickly to the front guys, I said [to myself] ‘One rider at a time’ and I did it, which was crazy! I was enjoying every single lap. Some riders overtook me again but I braked late enough to make them go wide.”

Thoughts on being the first ever MotoGP rider to win on three different manufacturers:

“To be honest, you never look at that, but when you see it, it makes you feel really special because not many riders could do things like that.