Maverick Vinales began his racing career racing in minimotos at the age of three. He moved on to circuit racing in 2002 and competed in the Catalan 50cc Championship. He was champion of the Catalan 125cc Championship in 2007 and 2008 and in 2010 he won the championship in the CEV Buckler 125GO series. Vinales moved up to Moto3 in 2012 and in 2013 he took the title with Alex Rins finishing runner-up. In 2014, Vinales moved up to Moto2 and had an extremely successful rookie season with four wins and nine podiums resulting in 3rd place in the championship and the rookie of the year award.  

In 2015, Vinales made the move up to MotoGP to race for the factory Suzuki team on their return to the premier class. Vinales became the first rider to move up to MotoGP after only one season in Moto2. 2015 was a successful year for Vinales, he scored six top-10 finishes and won the rookie of the year award. 2016 was an even better year for the Spaniard as he took his first MotoGP podium in France and then his first MotoGP win at Silverstone. In 2017, Vinales signed for the Monster Energy Yamaha team and started the season off strong with wins in the first two rounds of the season. He would go on to finish 3rd in the championship that year. 2018 was a tough year for Yamaha as they set a new record for a winless streak, Vinales did get a handful of podiums early in the season but there were to be no victories this year. 2019 was a better year for Vinales as he finished the year in 3rd in the championship again with 2 wins. During the shortened season of 2020 due to COVID-19, Vinales had a strong start with podiums in the first two rounds but suffered a lot of bad luck throughout the rest of the season and finished the year in 6th place overall. 2021 was a dramatic season for Vinales, he started strong by taking a dominating victory in Qatar but the rest of the season was disappointing. Just before the Austrian Grand Prix, Yamaha withdrew Vinales with the reasoning “unexplained irregular operation of the motorcycle” during the previous race. Yamaha and Vinales parted company after this incident, and he was left without a MotoGP seat for the remainder of the season. Aprilia announced that Vinales would race for them for the 2022 season but due to Lorenzo Savadori getting injured in August 2021, Vinales was able to make an early debut with the Aprilia team and continue with the 2021 MotoGP season. 2022 was a successful year for Vinales on the Aprilia as he scored three podiums for the Noale factory. In May 2022, it was announced that Vinales had signed a contract extension with Aprilia for 2023 and 2024. Vinales set sights on becoming the first rider to win with three different manufacturers and this came in the shape of a Grand Prix victory in COTA in 2024. For the 2025 season, Vinales moves to the Red Bull KTM Tech3 team alongside Enea Bastianini.