Defending MotoGP champion Joan Mir says he’s hoping for a miracle in the final sector of the Sachsenring circuit ahead of today’s German Grand Prix, as he attempts to turn around a poor Saturday performance that will see him start the race from a distant 17th place on the grid.
Admitting after qualifying that everything that could go wrong for them had gone wrong, he was nonetheless able to pinpoint its issues to one specific area of the tight and twisty German circuit – the fourth and final sector.
The sector, which starts as riders exit the famous Wasserfall turn and includes just two corners, the long fast turn 12 and the slow turn 13 which leads onto the back straight, includes one of the few passing places on the difficult track – and Mir says he needed to fix the issue in Sunday morning’s warm-up.
“Nothing went really right today,” he admitted. “We made an improvement from yesterday which was important, but we’re still missing a lot in sector four. I’m struggling to stop the bike and I have a lot of lock on the front and I don’t make the corner. It’s a shame because in the rest of the track I’m fast, and we just miss that sector – but in that sector we miss a lot. The problem is that here we’re all really close.
“I’m not frustrated with the team or anything – it’s the opposite. They’ve done a great job from yesterday to today, but we’re missing a lot. In Q1 I was first in the first sector, first in the second sector, third in the third sector and then in the fourth sector I was last. It’s clear what’s wrong.
“I was in front of my team-mate in all the sectors apart from the last one, and that makes me happy. Alex [Rins] managed to do that sector well and that means that the performance of the bike is OK here. We just have to put it all together.”
Part of the problem he seems to be having comes from the extremely high temperatures that have hit the Sachsenring this weekend, with the usual cool temperatures at the German track instead replaced by highs in the mid-thirties that has forced riders to use tyres they normally wouldn’t consider.
“It’s really strange,” said Mir. “The temperature is very high, and we’ve never raced with the hardest tyre in the allocation. The Suzuki works pretty well with the medium and we’re using the hard front. This means that I don’t really agree that it’s the correct way. With the Suzuki, you have to be smooth, and if you need a hard compound in front then it means that we’re not flowing well.
“It’s not about the tyre allocation and is more about the setting of the bike, how everything is done. We’ve improved a lot since yesterday – we improved almost one second in a 1m21s track. That means there’s margin to improve more, but it’s difficult because we’re not showing our real potential. This isn’t the Sachsenring that I expected.
“Ducati has made a huge step. This is a fact. And the conditions are pretty extreme, due to the heat, and maybe this is better for the Ducati, maybe it’s something that fits them. I don’t know, and I don’t like to look because I don’t have the feeling that I normally have with the Suzuki. I cannot perform at the level I should perform at.”
However, it’s not all doom and gloom for Mir. Confident that if he finds a solution then he can get stuck into the battle as usual, a somewhat cooler weather forecast might also play into his hands if temperatures drop enough to allow him to use the medium tyre.
That’s something that he might well have unlocked in this morning’s warm-up session, too, finishing the final sector considerably higher in the timesheets than he has been all weekend and only 0.1 off fastest man Taka Nakagami.
Crucially, he did it while still retaining his lightning-fast pace in the first two sectors, where he finished second to Fabio Quartararo and Nakagami. Doing enough to finish up fourth overall – a big improvement on his previous weekend-best of ninth, it hints that there might be a Sunday boost coming for the reigning champion.
“If we improve the last sector, we will be in a good position,” he insisted. “Not the best pace on the grid, but we will be fighting like a normal Sunday. But, with this issue it’s difficult. It was important today to work really well, because tomorrow I will try to do my best and to be as soon as possible in the top ten, to start to recover positions and to see what place I can end up in.
“This isn’t the best track for overtaking, but I will try. The problem I have doesn’t make it better to overtake, because there’s one place but it’s in that place where I’m struggling. But I think we can make an improvement because there’s margin and the bike works in that sector. We just have to get it right.”
