Suzuki MotoGP rider Joan Mir fears he won’t be able to finish the Indonesian Grand Prix at Mandalika after struggling massively through the first two days of the race weekend.
The 2020 champion was one of the standouts of the three-day pre-season test at the venue, but has come nowhere near those same heights in the race weekend.
This appears to have at least partially come to tyre supplier Michelin’s decision to revert to an older-spec rear tyre that features a stiffer carcass – a decision it says was down to the rear tyre temperatures being out of control in the test.
Speaking after qualifying 18th – eliminated in a Q1 session in which he did crash late on but also never really looked like a contender to advance – Mir said: “I expected that we could find a bit the way but I’m struggling a lot, to find the correct setting, the electronics, the geometry of the bike, everything.
“I’m not riding comfortable, I’m almost crashing in every corner, I’m going really really on the limit and I’m not able to be strong.”
UNBELIEVABLE! 🤯@marcmarquez93 AND @JoanMirOfficial are both OUT of Q2 after last lap crashes! 🛑#IndonesianGP 🇮🇩 pic.twitter.com/Brzvj7uIvB
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) March 19, 2022
Asked whether this was down to the rear tyre or the particular, partially-repaved Mandalika surface, he said: “I don’t know. Of course the package with all of that is not the correct one. We have to continue checking what is going on because at the moment we don’t know.”
Mir likened his feeling to the bike to that in the 2020 Portuguese Grand Prix, which was comfortably the worst weekend of his championship season – as he qualified 20th, collided with Francesco Bagnaia and Johann Zarco while trying to push his way forward, and retired with an electronics failure.
He said that Mandalika, with its lack of grip off the racing line, was “not the best track to start in 18th position, that’s for sure”.
“I will be not able to, riding in these conditions, I think to finish the race,” Mir also admitted. “I think that I will crash.
“Honestly. Because I’m riding too on the limit every corner, and like this it’s very easy to make a mistake.
“So, it will be really really hard if we don’t improve. I expect that we’ll be able to improve – because if not, it will be really hard.”
Team-mate Alex Rins has had a markedly better weekend and qualified eighth, albeit referencing “some problems with the front”.
But Rins’ big moment of the weekend so far came in the pre-qualifying fourth practice session, in which he had to jump off a burning Suzuki GSX-RR.
Session red flagged! 🛑
Not the Indonesia heat @Rins42 was expecting but track conditions need to be assessed at Turn 13#MotoGP | #IndonesianGP 🇮🇩 pic.twitter.com/jOjnoBTbl3
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) March 19, 2022
“I had a warning on Turn 10 but I was thinking that was the tyres because sometimes when the tyre is used, it takes time to work,” he recalled. “So I leaned on corner 10, I felt a bit of a slide, I went out, I looked at the back of the bike and I saw nothing. So I continued pushing.
“I was starting to feel something strange, on corner 12 I went in and I felt the rear starting to slide, I looked behind and I saw the fire. So immediately for my safety, for the safety of the other riders, I went out [off track] immediately and I tried to jump from the bike. But still they [the team] are looking [into what happened].”
