Viñales has 12 seasons of MotoGP experience and admits the physical demands of the class are relentless
Joan Mir’s retirement from last weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix barely registered on the news scale. The HRC rider and 2020 world champion pulled into the pits less than halfway through one of the hottest races of the year complaining of dizziness and “not having control of the situation”. The 29-year-old had only just returned from a four-round absence due to stress-induced vision problems and in 2026, the last of four largely sparse seasons with HRC, has finished in the top ten only once.
Mir’s predicament at Sepang paled in comparison to the furore over participation in the Qatar Grand Prix and Marc Márquez’s first win at the track in eight years, which leaves him close to a 10th world championship. Then there was Jorge Martin’s creditable attempt to compete with a broken right wrist, which proved fruitless: the Aprilia rider withdrew from the weekend on Saturday.
Much of the paddock’s reluctance to venture to the Middle East this week dovetails with the customary dip of energy at this point of the season. MotoGP has been boxed up in ‘flyaway’ mode for a month, with events in Japan, Indonesia, Australia and Malaysia, and now Qatar on the horizon as the final instalment of a triple-header. It is also a period when the 22 protagonists of the series are dealing with their own wear and tear.
Aprilia’s quartet are currently a twosome, with Raul Fernández (broken fingers) and Martin hoping to beat the clock to return at Lusail. Gresini’s Alex Márquez and Fermin Aldeguer are both recovering from surgery. Pramac Yamaha’s Toprak Razgatlıoğlu is out for the season with a right shoulder injury. HRC has missed Mir (and seen both of their substitute test riders succumb to injury as well), and Luca Marini sweated through Sepang having sat out Australia the previous weekend with a virus. “Something unique that I never felt: zero strength, zero power, but especially a lot of problems to move my hands and my fingers and my feet,” he told Motor Sport.
And the championship leader, Marc Márquez, is effectively excelling with one and a half arms, due to the physio and rehab needed on his right limb to be able to operate at ‘Márquez Standard’ in MotoGP.
Marc Márquez says his title bid has been “more an adaptation than rehabilitation” as he manages his right arm
MotoGP
“Sometimes you need to step back. Sometimes you cannot insist,” he said after his dominant run in Malaysia. “I will say that [the 2026 title tilt] was more an adaptation than rehabilitation because I just tried to adapt my riding style. I’m riding in a different way than last year, but able to be fast.”
Malaysia was arduous but not overtly punishing. The greasy and poor state of the Sepang asphalt led to different types of complaints, as most riders tended to slide and drift and float with the bike. It’s a contrast to the high grip of Misano, home of the San Marino GP, which accentuates the braking and acceleration dynamics and raises fatigue.
MotoGP usually bites and breaks. In 2026 so far there have been 279 crashes from the full-time roster, an average of 12.6 tumbles per rider. Only three in the current top 10 have finished every GP without a physical issue. Of the 22 on the grid only eight are in their 30s, and the average age will drop lower with Senna Agius (21), David Alonso (20), Daniel Holgado (21) and Izan Guevara (22) incoming for 2027.
The evolution of aerodynamics in the last half decade has made multi-million-dollar MotoGP bikes look like Transformers, and become heavier to stop and turn. Air turbulence requires more reactionary strength in the slipstream, and Michelin’s final year of an 11-year stint as sole tyre supplier hasn’t brought a drop in quality, with lap records regularly obliterated like flies on a visor.
Brembo’s fearsome brakes absorb more and more force, leaving many of the field with forearms like Popeye as well as the de facto grand prix racer’s ‘branding’: arm-pump fasciotomy scars. MotoGP’s tremendous recent parity between at least three of the five manufacturers increases pressure and expectations, and tests the bottomless will of athletes who have worked most of their junior and adolescent lives to reach this stage.
Mir retired from the Malaysian Grand Prix less than halfway through, complaining of dizziness and not having control of the situation
Honda
LCR Honda’s Diogo Moreira is coming to the end of his maiden MotoGP season, in which he has been a clear Rookie of the Year contender. The 22-year-old, still the reigning Moto2 world champion, has dealt with all the travails the class demands: braking adaptation, Michelin’s sticky traits, convoluted bike controls and devices, motorcycle development for Honda and a rare home GP spotlight. He has taken five top 10s finishes for good measure, earning a promotion to the factory HRC team for 2027. “Life changed because we don’t have free time now; we have media and most of the time we are working, compared to Moto2. But I’m happy,” the Andorra-based Brazilian declared to Motor Sport.
Moreira has five seasons of grand prix racing behind him, two each in Moto3 and Moto2 before this year, but 2026 has been a steep introduction to the premier class in the final throes of the 1000cc era, with a sprint on Saturday. “We are at the end of the season, and I would say that my mind and my body is going down,” he reflects. “It’s super stressful and you are travelling a lot. It is difficult to stay strong all year.”
Thirty-one-year-old Maverick Viñales has 12 seasons of MotoGP experience compared to Moreira’s one. The Tech3 KTM rider, a grand prix winner with three different manufacturers, looks to be ending his top-level career at the end of 2026, mostly due to the left shoulder fracture he sustained in a wet German Grand Prix crash in the summer of 2025. Viñales has tried three comebacks after at least two operations but still cannot bend the KTM RC16 to his will through left corners.
According to crew chief Manu Cazeaux, Viñales is one of the fastest on the grid in right-handers but cannot flick the bike the other way due to a lack of strength and pain in one particular muscle group. The problem seems to be slowly improving but time is not on his side. Tech3 has already signed Marini and Agius for 2027, and Viñales has not classified higher than 11th since Assen in June 2025, a run of 17 anxious GP starts as he tries to return to his days as a front-runner. Jack Miller once remarked that he believed Viñales was one of the fittest riders in MotoGP. However, the motocross fanatic still cannot bend his body for the final frustrating few tenths of a second.
Viñales is among the fastest riders on the grid in right-handers but still cannot flick the KTM through left corners after his shoulder injury
KTM
“That’s what’s so bad about this injury because for other sports I’m fit!” he told Motor Sport. “In MotoGP, with these extreme positions to lean, I feel pain. In motocross I have zero; and can do a full moto without problems. If I ride with a sports bike I can do 40 minutes without a problem. It’s quite shocking because when I’m home I work a lot but when I’m here after 10 laps I have pain.”
The psychological difficulty of competing in a highly public, individual, hazardous sport while representing a team, various manufacturers and even a country is another story. Physically, though, riders train manically, both to exercise the highest degree of control over their fortunes and as a form of injury avoidance.
“These guys really have to take care of themselves; they like endurance cycling sessions to be ready for the endurance of the race,” Flavio Dromi, a physio at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Centre and KTM’s full-time specialist, told Motor Sport. “When they are young maybe they are not 100% in control of their lifestyle, or their training programme is not so precise and they don’t follow the guidelines but, OK, they do have the benefit of youth and their recovery tends to be faster because their metabolism is faster. In your 30s; diet, training and better care are tools for prevention for elite athletes.”
“It’s also a medicine to take out the stress,” Viñales adds.
Finding the right blend of activity can be a case of trial and error. “After the Moto2 title last year I relaxed a bit, and I don’t think I prepared well for MotoGP this season,” Moreira confesses. “I was still working and training, but it was in a different way. After Austin [USGP, round three] I realised [the mistake] and I really started to work much more, especially in the summer break. We made a step.”
What was the issue? “I was finishing the races and I was super tired. I knew I needed some extra power to be able to fight in those last five laps, to be able to keep the pace until the end. I was aching and had pain, and I knew I needed something more.”
Moreira says his body is “going down” at the end of a first MotoGP season that has taken him to a factory HRC seat for 2027
MotoGP
“I had the priority to weigh as little as possible,” Viñales remembers of his first seasons with Yamaha, “because the Yamaha was not very fast and I needed to be as quick as I could on the straight. But the Yamaha was also a really good bike and was not physically demanding. Now the bikes are really demanding with all the aero and you need to ride the KTM really aggressively. Before the injury I think I weighed 5kg more than what I did in 2018 but this was all muscle to hang onto the KTM.”
Riders usually (at some point) have a collective around them for guidance. “I have my personal team,” says Moreira. “The general pieces; the physio, the nutrition, the trainer, the track [companion]. I prefer to have it this way because when I go to the gym then I really concentrate on that task with that [specific] person. When I go training with the bike then it’s that guy. I think we are working like this for four years, since I was in Moto3. For me it’s the best way to train.”
More wizened, Viñales thinks he’s had three different trainers in his career and has been a frequent visitor to Red Bull’s impressive facility in Austria since he joined KTM at the start of 2025. “They make more analysis and use machines that are hard to find in other places,” he says, “but all the experience, the professionals and the information are at a very high level.”
“A very strict programme always worked for me,” he continues. “I need to feel that I am pushing for a single mission. If I did this then I knew I would be performing at my best. If I couldn’t do it then I wasn’t at my best, and I don’t know why, maybe it’s a personality thing. It’s the same with the team; if I feel they are going with me all the way to the very end then I perform much better. Somehow alone, it is so hard to go to that limit.”
Moreira and Viñales ride other motorcycles all the time to keep the tactility of throttle control, even if, annoyingly, nothing can simulate the tools of their day job. “The MotoGP [bike] is much heavier, the engine; there is no other bike at home with the same philosophy. I still make flat track, motocross and ride a CBR. You can mix and play to do at least something. We’ll have one month free at the end of the year and then when we go again to Malaysia for the [pre-season] test it’s like the first day of school! It’s like being a rookie again and you need to find your way. When you are into the season then it all comes quickly, and on Fridays you already preserve this feeling [of the bike] from the previous race.”
Arm-pump surgery scars have become a de facto badge for grand prix riders
Looking at wiry riders like Miller, Alex Márquez, Marini, Pecco Bagnaia and Brad Binder, it’s clear that muscle mass does not equal bike strength. So what is a rider’s most important physical attribute? “They need to be very flexible because they have to manage their positioning for the turns – opening the hips and pressurising the other side of the bike – but also to tuck in for the straight,” says Dromi. “Then the forearms and the shoulders; there are many tracks where the demands are on the upper body and some where it is on the lower body. It depends on the layout and number of left/right turns. They do a lot of mobility sessions for this.”
Riders huff and puff off the track to succeed on it. “I think my highest heart rate was 192,” Moreira says. “It depends on the track. Australia was super-high because you cannot take a breath there. It was high all weekend and in the [Sprint] race. Here [in Malaysia] during the test I had a maximum of 182 because this track is more of a flow. I don’t like to run for cardio, so I cycle a lot. It’s the best way to train for this part.”
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When it goes wrong, Dromi says he treats a lot of bruising and skin abrasions (even if the leathers do a superb job of protection) and tries to provide rapid respite from other aches inflicted by crashes, as well as the consequences of premature return from injury. “A bone fracture for normal people can take four to five weeks to manage but riders move to the next phase after a few days,” he reckons.
A rider’s non-crash-related fear is the dreaded arm-pump syndrome. Notably it affected Martin’s push to take a podium at Misano this summer (he was fifth) and nearly required more knife work for the luckless Spaniard. “I’ve had the operation,” Moreira sighs. “If you don’t then I think it is very difficult to keep the potential for the whole race. The problem is not the pain but the [lack of] feeling with the brakes and the throttle. You cannot finish the race.”
Even gym sessions don’t always offer relief. Perhaps this is another explanation for MotoGP riders’ generally lithe physiques. “Cardio is easy to work but the muscles you need for the bike are tougher,” comments Viñales. “If you push too much then our arm-pump ‘friend’ appears. If you start to lift [weights] too much then the muscles get very strong and you don’t have space or elasticity. Then you have to go to the doctor to ‘open up’.”
“It’s a fine line, and so hard to balance,” he says. “In the last years I have started to suffer more and more with arm-pump. I never arrived at the point of needing an operation, but I suffered more, especially at tracks like Misano, Assen, in the past I didn’t feel anything.”
Moreira and Viñales have been lauded for their technique and finesse on two wheels. Would they have reached any of their career goals without all those hours of work away from MotoGP circuits? “For sure, no,” smiles Moreira.
“No, I don’t think so,” concurs Viñales. “Now, I feel like I need to ride to a point where I am going to crash in every corner to make the lap time, and if you are not fit then you don’t arrive to this level. You must be fit, and conscious that you must risk every metre to be fast.”
