“I don’t feel like Suzuki have really showed their cards at this test – I don’t know what you guys feel there.
“I think they’re a threat nonetheless, both Alex and Joan.”
The “nonetheless” was telling from Jack Miller, the Ducati rider who is the closest MotoGP has to a consensus favourite heading into the Qatar opener, in his final debrief of the five(four)-day test.
Miller will have seen enough from Suzuki’s ultra-nifty 2020 GSX-RR to know the firm will be a problem again this year, but it’s also clear that its Qatar test performance didn’t exactly blow him away.
And though riders do tend to focus on their own garage – or at least say they do – when it comes to testing, Miller’s the kind of guy who you’d expect to at least take a look at what the others are doing, especially given how super-smooth his own Qatar test was.
Miller’s assessment is probably not any kind of mind game, and it’s clearly not wrong. The Suzukis were seventh and eighth on combined laptimes, and when it comes to proper long runs the GSX-RR didn’t go very long.
A cursory look at the data from the second test, after the two-day break, suggests both sides of the Suzuki garage were still tinkering with the bikes and various bits, heavily favouring four/five-lap runs.
But what does that mean, exactly? Was Suzuki sandbagging and preparing to unleash terrifying performance come race weekend? Or has its title defence started on the wrong foot? We do not really know for sure, but the simplest explanation – or at least the one that requires the fewest assumptions, Occam’s razor-style, is neither.
“During the test I tried to give my maximum percent because when you are riding at the maximum percent trying the new parts you can see if it’s working better or not,” said Rins when asked whether Suzuki really was holding something back.
“We tested everything, for sure in the race we do a step forward always.”
“We are one of the fastest but we are not the fastest” :: Joan Mir
So, there’s your strongest argument against any sort of deliberate sandbagging – why would you bother to if you need to be riding at or close to the limit in order to assess new parts?
And Suzuki’s works riders certainly made it seem like there were a lot of new parts. Not all of those parts are for 2021 – Rins was already sampling the ‘22 prototype engine as early as the second day – but it’s certainly clear, if there was ever any doubt, that development on the GSX-RR has not been eased off following the marque’s title success.
But it’s also very clear that there’s a lot of confidence – confidence that some may even interpret as ‘arrogance’ – in how good and versatile the base Suzuki package already is. And what makes it clear is how Suzuki’s test programme was laid out.
When the final day of the five-day test was scuppered by dust and wind, the Yamaha riders for example were not terribly bothered. Sure, extra mileage is always nice, but they got what they came here for. But there was definitely a note of discontent from Suzuki’s reigning champion Joan Mir, because he had more weekend-specific preparation to get through.
“For us, to not test today, it was not positive,” Mir made clear on Friday. “We have still a lot of things to try.
“The problem is that the first three days we tried a lot of things and the problem was that most of them were not working – [they were] more to try and to develop for 2022.
“Then these two days, yesterday and today, it was more to be focused on the performance, on the race.
“Today was more the day to make a long run, to make a time attack, and it’s something that we were not able to do.”
“I feel prepared at 70%. I think that the Ducatis, they are really fast, and the Yamahas, it’s one track that fits so well for them, also for us but probably we are not as strong as them, especially [when compared] with some Yamahas.
“We are one of the fastest but we are not the fastest. And for sure I’m not 100% satisfied because I’m not the strongest on the test.”
Just think about the situation here. Yes, Qatar weather disruptions aren’t exactly commonplace, but Suzuki was given five days of testing at a track that will host the first two rounds of the championship, and still elected to focus on extensive parts testing and 2022 trials instead of eking out performance.
That suggests, again, an extreme amount of confidence and familiarity with the basic package – you probably cannot, for instance, imagine Yamaha doing something like that with its moody M1 bikes.
Likewise, while Suzuki did have a 2021 chassis available at the test, getting a final verdict on that was low enough on the priority list – or perhaps never in the plan at all – that neither rider looks likely to use it in the Qatar races. And yet that’s probably not a huge drama because of the quality of the 2020 base.
The Suzukis will probably not start on the first row
“I’m not sure if I will use [the ‘21 chassis] for the race weekend because there was not enough time to try – but for the rest, everything OK,” said Rins in light of the final day being scuppered. He also referred to “small problems on the front” with the new frame.
“Probably we will go with the same one as last year,” said Mir of the chassis. “The new chassis, it performs quite well but we need to make a good set-up for it, and we don’t have that time.
“It will be key if the team now makes good work on the computer, probably it’s even more important than testing today, and they have now 10 days of a lot of work, so even if we stay here in Qatar [which all of Suzuki will] I think that they will not get bored.”
But what of the test performance itself? Well, let’s tackle the headline stuff first – the fastest laps. In last year’s Suzuki test, Rins and Mir were fourth and sixth overall, two and three tenths off pacesetter Maverick Vinales respectively. Rins even went as far as topping a day of running.
Equally though, their times were still slower than they were here – it’s just that the others made a bigger step forward.
Mir ended this five-day test 0.583s off Miller’s record lap. Rins was 0.616s off. That’s nothing to write home about – but going by the spread of the field in the 2019 Qatar GP, that’s probably enough for Q2. The key word being probably.
And the champion bike being six tenths off in qualifying trim just cannot seem all that strange to anyone who’s watched MotoGP in 2020, because that’s how far back both Mir and Rins were all the time, week after week, save for a couple of notable exceptions.
In fact, when it was put to Mir by The Race that Suzuki’s single-lap competitiveness actually looked slightly improved compared to 2020, he was amenable to such an interpretation.
“Yeah, that’s right, the laptime that I did with the first [fresh rear] tyre [on Thursday] was quite good, only half a second behind – that is not so much,” Mir said.
“I think that I also have a bit more margin, I think the others also, but we will see.”
The margin argument also seems accurate. Mir left a tenth on the table compared to his ‘ideal’ lap, Rins was down two tenths, but all the four bikes that went under the lap record – Miller, Vinales, Fabio Quartararo and Franco Morbidelli – all put together their best sectors on those respective days.
The race pace question is more complicated, as it always is. Mir felt he’d “made a step” in terms of race pace on Thursday, but the runs were never long enough to where you can really surmise how much fuel the bikes were carrying, how old their tyres were and whether they were back-to-backing significant set-up changes or making minor tweaks.
Remember too that a Suzuki rider has never graced a Qatar MotoGP rostrum… So it’s not a track the team will be banking on
The caveat there is that Mir did do a long-ish run on day two of the test, before the two-day break, and pumped in seven laps firmly in the 1m54.6s to 1m55.0s bracket. Yes, the Yamahas and the Ducatis have shown something more since, but as of the first two days that was as impressive as anything out there – so there’s every reason to believe Mir (and probably Rins, too) would be right up there if they got a genuine Thursday or Friday race simulation in.
But in another sense that doesn’t really matter, because the race is obviously not held in the relative vacuum of a race simulation in a test. The Suzukis will probably not start on the first row, and though their outrageous corner speed and ability to shock rivals with their racing lines mean they do not have the same problem with overtaking as the Yamahas do, they too have reason to fear Ducati’s grunt on the 1.07km straight of the Losail International Circuit.
“Yeah, it is something that you have to be worried [about] because now looking at the top speed here, I normally make 343[km/h]s, like probably the Yamahas, and [Pramac Ducati rider] Zarco is 357[km/h]. It’s a lot of difference, almost 15 ks,” said Mir.
“And this is something that for the race it will be really difficult to manage for us.”
And yet it also might be quite useful – if a Ducati hits the front and then slows up the pace to conserve tyres, it’ll give the Suzukis extra time to scythe their way through the order. It’s why Rins says he hopes to see a race like Qatar 2019 – because in 2019 that’s what happened with Andrea Dovizioso leading, and it allowed Rins to finish fourth from 10th on the grid, just half a second down on the winner.
Remember too that a Suzuki rider has never graced a Qatar MotoGP rostrum – that Rins finish is the closest Suzuki has come, by far. So it’s not a track the team will be banking on, and you’d imagine Mir and Rins would be happy enough to just be in the podium fix and bag some good points, even if it’s a Ducati or a Yamaha double.
More favoured circuits will follow, and maybe then the ‘21 chassis will be unleashed and make Suzuki an even more potent threat. But even in Qatar, on the basis of testing, Suzuki doesn’t really look in trouble. Miller is right that the GSX-RRs “haven’t really showed their cards”, but it’s likely only because it can’t really show them at the Losail International Circuit. Just you wait, in other words.
Certainly, there’s no particular pessimism emanating from either rider. “We finished the test with good conclusions, very positive,” said Rins. “We are ready.”
Mir, for his part, flagged up that the engine freeze played into Suzuki’s hands, because “we cannot make any mistake on the evolution of the bike” and “the bike last year was working”.
And when asked whether rivals should be worried about Suzuki, he said: “I don’t know. I think we are always there so for sure they have to be.”
