After the opening night of practice for the 2022 MotoGP season at the Qatar Grand Prix, it very much looked like Suzuki duo Alex Rins and Joan Mir – first and third fastest – were initial favourites.
Some might now have lowered their expectations of the 2020 world champion squad after Rins and Mir qualified only 10th and eighth respectively.
But there’s still plenty of evidence that the GSX-RR will be the bike to beat on Sunday evening.
That’s because while qualifying might have been Mir’s achilles heel in the past, the improvements first noted in late 2021 and continued into 2022 remain – even if circumstance rather than outright speed caught him out while battling headwinds on the Lusail circuit’s (its name now officially spelt the same as the nearby town and stadium after a winter change) long straights during Saturday night’s session.
“I have to be happy, because we are faster than last year,” Mir said after the session.
“Of course, I expected a little bit more, but everyone was following someone and I was the one alone.
“I know that in such a qualifying like this one, everyone doing the same lap times, you can gain one or two tenths following someone. For the future I know what I have to do.
“Sometimes it’s better to go alone and sometimes it’s not – and today it was.
“I missed three tenths from the pole – it’s not a lot. For sure, when you follow one guy and there’s a lot of wind, you don’t feel the wind so much. Maybe it’s not three tenths, but there is something.
“We don’t have to think so much about this result, because we have the bike, we have the package.”
So although Mir and Rins might be a bit further down on the grid, many of their rivals are also putting their bets on the Suzukis in the race based more on FP4’s longer runs than on the slightly unrepresentative qualifying performances we saw.
“I’m intrigued to see how this new Suzuki performs under race conditions,” explained Ducati rider Jack Miller.
“It seems like they’ve gained something, because last year Mir got passed by two Ducatis before the finish line and this weekend I saw Rins pass [Fabio] Di Giannantonio before the last corner.
“It’ll be interesting to see how they get on. I wouldn’t say they’ll be at the back.”
“The pace for the race is good,” Mir admitted in response. “Yeah, we have to start from the back, we have to make some manoeuvres on the first lap, but that’s our style.
“I’m happy that Jack is surprised about our pace, and I hope that we can fight tomorrow. We cannot make pole position and break away, but it’s always a little more difficult for us!
“The target is to fight for the victory, and I think we have the pace to do it. There are a lot of other riders who are also strong – Marc [Marquez], Fabio [Quartararo], some of the Ducatis like [Jorge] Martin will also be quite strong.
“Starting from eighth position isn’t the best thing, but the important thing is that we have a better engine than last year and we can defend.
“I think that we can make a good race. If we take a bit of care of the tyre, I think we can do a better job than the others too.”
Suzuki’s tyre life is actually another area raised by Miller in particular, with the Australian highlighting that the GSX-RR’s new and improved engine – one that he claims is worth 30bhp more than last year – might bring new challenges for the team in terms of both how much fuel it now needs and how the Michelins react to the extra power.
“The fuel will be really important,” Mir agreed. “It’s crazy how the bike changes with the race map and the qualifying map. My bike and everyone’s bike.
“That’s why sometimes you see lap times in FP4 where a rider isn’t really fast and another is – it’s purely for the map. The change is a little bit more on our bike this year, which I am happy for!”
On the other side of the garage, Mir’s team-mate Rins wasn’t quite as happy with his own Saturday performance. Less able to attribute his qualifying result to external factors than Mir, he nonetheless also believes that he too hasn’t shown his own true pace.
“I’m not happy with the result because I was expecting more,” he said. “But it is what it is. We gave our 100%, and we need to understand why we’re starting P10.
“Everything is so close, everything is there, but it doesn’t matter because we’re P10.
“But overall we’re in a good way. In FP4, I was trying some things on the bike that was making it a little difficult to be constant – but trying them means we didn’t show our ideal pace.
“But I’m calm for the race, I feel ready to race, and let’s see what we can do starting from 10th.”
