How the Zen of Maverick Viñales is extending a career and pushing KTM closer to spoils
The competitiveness is all about attitude.
By Adam Wheeler. Photos by Polarity photo.
Eleven seasons and ten wins with three different manufacturers means the former fiery racer is one of the most experienced and appreciated riders on the grid. In 2025 he has brought Red Bull KTM closest to a trophy in his first year in orange.
Maverick, are you happy?
“Yeah! I’m always happy when I’m at peace.”
Why at peace?
“Just being myself.”
It feels like a throwaway line but the Spaniard is beaming. We talk inside the Red Bull KTM Tech3 hospitality on the eve of the Aragon Grand Prix. Team Principal Herve Poncharal comes out of his office to greet his rider. The Frenchman had given an interview earlier that day revealing, among many details, that the team is talking with investors and may not continue their seven-year association with KTM after 2026 depending if the Austrians stay on the MotoGP grid or not. Poncharal says he’d like to chat with Maverick after our appointment (clearly for explanation) but the Spaniard’s cheery, calm demeanour does not alter. Viñales would finish P18 on Sunday after a slow speed crash took him out of the running for the top seven. At the IRTA test on Monday he would set the fastest ever two-wheeled lap of MotorLand.
More than a decade and three factories (Suzuki, Yamaha and Aprilia) into his MotoGP career it’s easy to forget that Viñales was the initial firebrand: a wild and mercurial teenage wonder that zoomed through Moto3 and Moto2 (he only finished outside of the top four of a championship once in nine seasons in all categories, and that was his MotoGP rookie attempt in 2015) and has won in seven of those eleven premier class campaigns. There were team splits in Moto3 and then most dramatically with Yamaha in 2021, protests, and infuriating inconsistency that has kept him away from a championship bid but since his marriage to Raquel, relocation from Andorra close to his roots in Girona and the birth of his pre-school daughters Nina and Blanca he has brought a serenity and composure to his racing to match the famed speed and precision.
2025 has been trophyless for Red Bull KTM so far but Viñales has come nearest. Once he, Crew Chief Manual Cazeaux and the team sorted the balance of the KTM RC16 at round two in Argentina then Maverick has looked the most likely to make the podium and achieved the feat with P2 at round four in Qatar until being stripped of the silverware with a 16-second penalty for violating tyre pressures. Fellow new recruit Enea Bastianini has struggled to make the top ten, Brad Binder has been searching for solutions to cure a lack of edge grip and understeer and Pedro Acosta is normally the fastest KTM rider but also the most vocal with his frustrations. In contrast Viñales has been touting the potential of his Tech3 set-up like a mantra. It seems to fit with his stoic philosophy and a placidity hides a manic desire to perform.
“Somehow, I understand - with experience - that when you do a good result then you are not that good and when you do a bad result you are not that bad,” he says. “The talent and the potential are always there: it’s just a matter of how you take it out. When you understand this then it makes you very calm.”
I wonder aloud if this approach would have benefited a 21-year-old Maverick. “With this experience it would be great to be 21 again!” he laughs, before quickly adding: “It’s not because I feel I was much better before…in fact, it is the opposite – I am stronger and wiser now – but when you are 30 it is only four-five years more of career [left]. I would like to ride forever! That’s why I’d like to be 21 again. I love motorcycles and to race in MotoGP.”
Seven of the 22 riders on the grid are fathers, and the history of elite motorsport is full of cliched nonsense about the effects and consequences of fatherhood. In Viñales’ case the demands and logistics as well as the emotions of family life were what impacted him the most.
“When Nina arrived the weight of responsibility came straightaway. So big. I couldn’t have imagined it, and the fact that it was forever because before, for me, it was sometimes hard to have a compromise,” he explains. “I would make sacrifices [to be a racer] but I would also get restless or bored. I was not loyal enough to the process. In two-three-year periods I would almost give-up or get tired. Now, with the kids I learned to make the sacrifices and to keep the focus. “
“I wanted to help my wife but also do MotoGP well,” he adds on the life-change. ”The transition from Yamaha to Aprilia was like a nightmare. It was really hard professionally but also at home I wanted to do a good job so it was tough. Now, I have to have a plan for many parts of my life, and also for MotoGP I put my terms. A small example: in, I don’t know, Jerez I might say ‘I need to do this part of the braking in a very good way’. The next one might be ‘In Mugello I want to have recovered all my corner speed’. Mini goals, mini plans and, in the end, it makes for a big strong window. That’s my organisation. I bring what I set at home to here. I try to be precise in the details.”
This level-headed methodology has its uses. “I think it has helped everybody on the team,” he admits. “Everybody is calm and working good, and that is something I learned especially from working with the Japanese. As soon as you start to press a bit extra or maybe too much the people get a bit more nervous and little mistakes happen that you can avoid. It’s important to stay calm and positive and be ready for the opportunity.”
Viñales is quietly spoken, likeable and comes across as shy. In January he tipped into his 30s and I ask how he resists the angst and the pressures of his job. The smile comes back. “One rule I put to myself is to only be disappointed for five minutes…and away from everybody,” he reveals. “I will put the timer on the phone, sit there and say ‘f**k my life, f**k everybody, I want to punch something…’ and then when the time is up I will close it and move onto the next race. This I learned from my daughters because [with small kids] you need to breathe a lot! They don’t stay still for ten seconds. We’ll be eating and then someone is on me or eating my food! My patience went from one side of the scale to the other!”
Across the table his tattooed arms are muscley and toned. He is ripped and in shape and other riders have commented on how Maverick is one of the fittest in the paddock. After many years as a Monster Energy rider, the KTM deal allowed him into the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center and he’s jumped into the regime with abandon. But the gym is not his sole reserve. When he’s not out on the road with an expensive Canyon bicycle then he’s gaining his form another way. “I ride motocross,” his eyes flash. “I like to go twice a week but now at this stage of the season I’ll do motocross once, flat track once, and then ride on the 600 or the 1000, so, three days in total. In motocross I’ll ride for 20 minutes to see the track and the lines and I’ll do two fast laps. Then I’ll try to do a 30-40 moto…but it depends on the track because if it’s really rough then it can be really hard with the 450. When I feel that the bike is riding me rather than me riding the bike then I stop. It gives you so much energy. I see the heartrate. On the bicycle I go full gas and get to 180-181. I see motocross and I’m at 186 average, starting from 130. So, I probably reach 190. Motocross is so strong. MotoGP is chilled! It is super-mental though, and with the aerodynamics it is so stressful for the arms. With the Yamaha I as chilled: it was so easy! I’m well prepared.”
In contrast to others on the grid, Viñales has been lucky with injuries (he knocks the wooden table when I mention this). He rarely crashes and the scariest ‘off’ probably came with his vicious highside from the Aprilia during Q3 in Sachsenring in 2024. He was still able to race the Sprint later that day. “The problem is more mental,” he says of the exertions of MotoGP. “The weekends are so tight and we have many things to do. Saturday is the worst day. The Sprint is ten ‘Quali’ laps, pushing like this [he lifts his finger to chin]. It makes the weekend much more of a mental thing. The bikes have changed and have more resistance to the wind and physically it is harder to change direction. The faster you go the more physical it is but, at the moment, I feel really good. This year I am probably the best I have been for shape.”
Viñales is not only fast but he has embraced the 2025 challenge with KTM by becoming more adaptable and versatile. It bodes well with the calendar not yet at the halfway point and with KTM still pushing, testing and looking for solutions into 2026, despite the recent uncertainty over their future motorsport plans. “In Qatar I was impressive; I’ve never ridden this clean and so much over the problems,” he describes. “Before it was hard to do that. I would have to stop and try to change things. Now if there is a problem then I ride over it or try to find a solution my way. It gives you so much energy. It’s so nice. In Qatar I was just flowing. It’s not easy to have this feeling. We will arrive to this point at more races.”
In contrast to Acosta’s seeming impatience with KTM (even though he has been backed by the factory since his first Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup days), Maverick wears the orange shirt and the cap with relish and pride. He has spoken of the allure of that ‘Red Bull KTM’ logo before and says the craving to finally get inside the structure came from his fixation with off-road racing. “When I was a kid I had so many posters of the KTMs and the great riders they had,” he offers, appearing wistful at the memory. “The years of Marvin [Musquin], [Ken] Roczen, [Ryan] Dungey: I always thought it would be so cool to have Red Bull KTM on my leathers. I wanted to be part of that family, that group. It was an obsession, and I pushed everybody around me to make it happen. The first time I spoke with Pit [Beirer, KTM Motorsports Director] he said ‘why do you want to come? You are good in Aprilia…’ and I said, ‘I want to come! I don’t care…sign the contract! I want to come and ride and push for you and give my maximum’ and this is how the KTM story started.”
And is by no means finished.