A third weekend watching from the outside
The shoulder has not healed. Maverick Vinales will not ride at Misano this weekend, and Red Bull KTM confirmed it earlier today.
That makes three grands prix in a row missed by the Spaniard. He has been carrying a left shoulder problem for more than a year, and the summer break was supposed to give him room to sort it out. Instead, fresh checks found what the team described as “a small tear in the infraspinatus”, one of the rotator cuff muscles that hold the joint together. Wrestling a MotoGP bike with that is a losing argument.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I will put everything as always into this recovery,” Vinales said.
His season had gone flat well before the injury forced the issue. Not one top-ten finish all year. And with Senna Agius lined up to take over the seat in 2027, the clock on his current ride is running faster than the recovery timeline.
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Pol Espargaro keeps the seat warm
KTM test rider Pol Espargaro steps in for a third time, lining up next to Enea Bastianini in San Marino.
“While our priority remains supporting Maverick in his recovery, we are pleased to have Pol with us again in Misano,” Tech3 team manager Nicolas Goyon said. “He knows the team extremely well and has already shown his professionalism and commitment during his last two appearances this season.”
Espargaro scored points on his first outing of the year at Silverstone and finished 16th at Aragon last Sunday, cutting his gap to the race winner along the way. He is not pretending the results flatter him.
“Still, I miss a lot of speed. It’s just my second race and when the tyres get used, I suffer a lot,” he said. “But anyway, I feel that I’m getting faster and let’s see what happens in Misano, if we get Maverick back. If not, I haven’t raced here since 2022, but I’m used to doing testing at Misano, so we’ll see.”
A schedule that keeps swapping bikes
Misano is only one stop on a strange stretch for Espargaro. Once the race is done he switches back to KTM’s 850cc Pirelli-shod prototype for a private test at Mugello, then could return to the current 1000cc machine at the Austrian Grand Prix, with an official 850cc test on the Monday after.
How long he keeps the race seat depends entirely on a shoulder nobody will put a date on.
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