Superbike Rider Dies In A Serious Accident At The Jerez Circuit

"In the Viñales family we offer bottles of gasoline from birth", proclaimed this January Ángel Viñales, Maverick's father, with enthusiasm for the project that they both launched then: a new team to promote the career of Dean Berta Viñales, 15 years old, son of a cousin of the MotoGP rider. Since grandfather José participated "in pirate races" on the roads of the Costa Brava, the whole family had competed on a motorcycle in some way and Dean was the last passionate, after Maverick and his cousin Isaac, who came to race in Moto3. With the new team, financially supported by Maverick and led by Ángel, Dean could find his way to the World Championship, but it was tragically cut short this Saturday at the Jerez circuit.

14-Year-Old Driver, Dies After An Accident

In the fourteenth race of the year of the Supersport 300, one of the training categories of the World Superbikes, Dean Berta Viñales suffered an accident in which he lost his life. With three laps to go to the end of the test, in which Adrián Huertas aspired to be proclaimed champion, a multiple crash left Viñales lying in the middle of the track at turn 1, in the middle of the line and several pilots could not avoid the collision . The teenager suffered serious head and chest injuries and, although he was treated on the track itself, the circuit medical personnel were unable to revive him.

"We are deeply saddened to report the death of Dean Berta Viñales," the Superbike World Championship announced at 3.11pm and, immediately, messages of condolences to the family piled up on social networks. "I can't fit a single word, it's terrible news. I just want to remember it with that beautiful smile," lamented, for example, Julián Simón , 125cc champion in 2009 and current coach of Maverick Viñales himself. "We are devastated. Our thoughts are with Dean's family," Viñales Racing Team, the team created by the family to support the young driver this year, wrote on their social networks.

THE BEGINNINGS, BEFORE THE AGE OF THREE

The intention before the event was that next year, if perhaps the following year, Dean Berta Viñales would compete in a higher category in the Superbike World Championship - a Supersport 300 weighs 140 kilos and reaches 200 km / h - and then try to reach the Moto3 World Championship. A dream with the worst of the endings. Like almost all of his cousins, Dean got on a motorcycle for the first time when he was not yet three years old on the dirt circuit next to the Zodiac nightclub in Roses and at the age of six he came to compete on pocket bikes, but I leave. As a child he preferred to play soccer in his town, Palau Saverdera, between Roses and Llança, until at age 11 he re-engaged in motorcycling.

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"I played football, but I did not like it. Motorcycles have more emotion and I have always seen my family on motorcycles," Dean pointed out in one of the few interviews he had given, to the digital Emporda.info, in 2018. At that time he trained in Valencia with the Cradle of Champions and was looking for an opportunity that eluded him at the end of the following year. In October 2019, he did the tests to participate in the Red Bull Rookies Cup, the largest platform towards the Motorcycle World Championship, but he was not chosen and continued training in other competitions. Last year, with the help of his second cousin Maverick Viñales, he participated in the European Talent Cup of the Spanish Speed   Championship and this year he had jumped into the Superbike World Championship in search of greater fortune.

In the Supersport 300, Dean was twenty-second in the general classification with 26 points and a sixteenth place as the best position, in the second race at the Most circuit in the Czech Republic. Somehow, this year the teenager was hurt by the break between Maverick Viñales and Yamaha and MotoGP because he lost the assistance of the Japanese brand that he had at the beginning of the course. Likewise, despite missing two races for this reason, he continued to compete with a Yamaha waiting for changes for the next season and to follow a path that unfortunately he will no longer be able to travel.

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