MotoGP’s 2020 champion Joan Mir has signed a new deal with current employer Honda that will take him to the end of the current regulations cycle in 2026.
That’s despite a lack of tangible success in his season and a half there so far.
Mir's sole top-five grand prix finish on the Honda RC213V so far is also his sole top-10 finish, and he's only scored a single point in a sprint race since the introduction of the format at the start of 2023.
He joined Honda last year following the withdrawal of Suzuki, the brand he became champion with, and was outperformed by both factory team-mate Marc Marquez and LCR’s Alex Rins in a frustrating, injury-marred first Honda season
After Marquez and Rins both left, Mir has been a credible contender to be considered Honda's lead rider in 2024 - but the RC213V has become even less competitive.
Meanwhile, a high rate of crashes for the 26-year-old has marred both seasons, to the point that there were even rumours he would step away from MotoGP entirely - something Mir admitted to have contemplated.
Amid all that, a renewal with Honda seemed impossible - at least until a recent softening in his tone. And it's exactly what Mir has settled on as his next course of action, having surveyed the options available to him and having decided that if he were to leave Honda now it would be an admission of failure that he cannot accept.
THE RACE SAYS
A new Honda-Mir deal felt unthinkable earlier this season when Mir was crashing every other race and saying things like "nobody comes out of Honda in a better way than they went in" - saying them repeatedly, in fact.
But that turn of phrase is a clue for why Mir's decision has now gone the way it did. His stock as a MotoGP rider has well and truly tanked compared to the sky-high levels it was at when he won his title.
There was almost certainly no elegant off-ramp here, both no better factory seat and no Marquez-like move to a satellite Ducati, especially not now that Ducati's down two bikes with Pramac leaving for Yamaha.
The suggestion of Mir going to Trackhouse Aprilia, where his ex-Suzuki boss Davide Brivio now runs things, did seem logical - and you'd surely think he would've leapt to the top (or near it anyway) of its list of candidates had he expressed a serious interest - but it would've been square one.
Chances are very high that team and those bikes will be stronger than whatever Honda can come up with in 2025, but the chances Mir would return to the regular frontrunning he once enjoyed on a satellite Aprilia he'd have to learn from scratch just aren't so high.
Either way, there's just no way into a prime factory ride before 2027. Everything's locked down, and if it suddenly isn't because someone has badly underperformed the queue to replace them stretches through the whole MotoGP paddock.
So you stay. You bide your time in 2025 and 2026, collect what should be a solid paycheck unavailable elsewhere, and hope that concession status can at least make the bike good enough for it to be worth showing up in the near future.
More importantly, you wait and see what Honda comes up with for 2027, with the 850cc engines and the reduced aero and the device ban.
If that truly does reset the order, Honda - which certainly could use a fresh start on the engine front - is potentially where you want to be anyway.
Mir just has to make sure he gets there fit, without any long-term injuries and limitations, having been crashing at truly unsustainable levels in his time aboard the RC213V.
WHAT MIR AND HONDA SAY
"I believe that by continuing to input my opinions to HRC, I can contribute to improving the RC213V," said Mir.
"I know what I need to do and I know what Honda can achieve, so I hope that we can both achieve it."
Remarkably, Mir is the first signing to the Repsol-backed Honda factory team to earn a second contract since Marquez.
Mir's three predecessors - Jorge Lorenzo, Alex Marquez and Pol Espargaro - left the team either at the expiration of their original deals or, in Lorenzo's case, even earlier.
"This has been a tough season for Honda and HRC, unlike anything they have ever experienced before," said Honda Racing Corporation president Koji Watanabe.
"Even in these circumstances, Mir has trusted the team, and we are very grateful for his attitude of never giving up and fighting at any time."
While it has been making use of its new-for-2024 concession status allowing private testing with race riders and in-season engine changes, Honda has scored a horrific 24 points in the manufacturers' standings so far this year - compared to 89 at the same point last year.
THE REST OF THE HONDA LINE-UP
Luca Marini will remain Mir's team-mate, having signed a two-year deal originally to come in for 2024, while the test rider line-up will be made up of Stefan Bradl and new signing Aleix Espargaro.
Over at customer team LCR, Johann Zarco will - like Marini - be on the second year of a two-year deal in 2025, but there remain major question marks over whether other seat, backed by Japanese company Idemitsu, will go to rookie Ai Ogura or continue to be held by Takaaki Nakagami.
