Now it’s been confirmed that 2020 MotoGP world champion Joan Mir will miss next weekend’s San Marino Grand Prix due to the extensive ankle injuries he suffered in his opening lap high-side in Austria, Suzuki needs to find a replacement.
But with its usual number one substitute candidate Sylvain Guintoli also injured, who can Suzuki get to step in?
Mir crashed heavily on the opening lap of Sunday’s race at the Red Bull Ring and suffered extensive bone and ligament damage in the fall.
Medical Info 📋#MotoGP rider #36 @JoanMirOfficial; a CT scan evidenced a ligament tear in his right foot. He's been declared unfit #AustrianGP 🇦🇹 pic.twitter.com/ROvZ1nV6ri
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) August 21, 2022
He has been ordered to take 15 days of total rest before he’s able to return to MotoGP action, ruling out Misano but leaving open the possibility of racing at the Aragon Grand Prix two weeks later.
Under MotoGP’s rules, any rider who is out of action for 10 days or more must be replaced – and that timer was started when Mir was declared unfit following the Austrian race.
The process of replacing him would normally be an easy choice for Suzuki, but it’s been complicated by the injuries sustained by European test rider Guintoli while preparing for last month’s Suzuka 8 Hour race, where he damaged his wrist.
He quickly took to social media in the wake of the Mir news to declare himself out of contention for the spot, and that now leaves the team in something of a quandary.
Get well soon mate. Unfortunately I am also recovering from injury sustained in Suzuka so won’t be able to replace. What a year 🤯 As they say in 🇬🇧 “When it rains, it pours” https://t.co/zAQaRzrGH9
— Sylvain Guintoli (@SylvainGuintoli) August 23, 2022
One option, of course, would be to do what Suzuki did once before and deploy its Japanese test rider Takuya Tsuda.
He’s only made one MotoGP appearance, when he deputised for the injured Alex Rins at Jerez in 2017 before handing the bike over to Guintoli for the rest of Rins’s absence.
Now 38, Tsuda is the most likely candidate if Dorna insists Suzuki must field two bikes at Misano.
Another option would be to use former MotoGP racer Xavier Simeon, the only rider in Suzuki’s stable with extensive experience of the premier class.
The Belgian, who is Guintoli’s championship-winning Endurance World Championship team-mate on the Yoshimura SERT Suzuki, raced for Avintia Ducati in 2018.
But, with Suzuki in no further need of testing following the team’s announcement that it would withdraw from the series at the end of the year and with the endurance team also folding at the same time, both Tsuda and Simeon would be somewhat unadventurous choices at a time when Suzuki has got nothing to lose.
Instead, why not throw caution to the wind and try something far more adventurous?
We’re deliberately heading off into the realms of fantasy here and suggesting a couple of ideas that we know can’t happen but would give Misano a boost if they did.
Suzuki’s referenced that it will make its decision about its second bike in conjunction with series promoter Dorna, and it’s unlikely to not have been mentioned that the Misano round of the championship is – according to paddock rumours – in severe trouble based on early ticket sales.
That’s something we’ve already seen at an Italian round this year, when Mugello’s crowd figures plummeted in the absence of the retired Valentino Rossi – pictured above in his final home MotoGP race at Misano last year.
So that open space at Suzuki is an open opportunity for the team to boost flagging crowd numbers and perhaps even win some goodwill from Dorna at a time where the brand is set to pay a substantial settlement for breaching its contract and departing from the series.
Of course, in an ideal world, there’s only one candidate who everyone would love to see on the bike. Sure, Rossi has been retired for a year – but still staying fit and sharp thanks to the amount of training he does at his ranch with the VR46 Academy, it would be unlikely that a one-off return would spell too big a challenge to him physically.
Even better, there’s a natural partnership with the Suzuki team thanks to its Monster Energy sponsorship – and with the bike one of the only remaining inline-four engined machines on the grid alongside the Yamahas, the adaptation process for the nine-time grand prix champion is unlikely to be a significant one.
Being realistic, that’s not going to happen. If nothing else, Misano clashes with the Hockenheim round of the GT World Challenge Europe series in which Rossi now races a WRT Audi in his post-retirement car racing career.
Alternatively, there’s no clash between MotoAmerica and MotoGP that weekend – something that in theory would open the door to perennial fan favourite Danilo Petrucci.
Booted out of KTM under 12 months ago, not under a factory contract and from only down the road, he’s probably second only to Rossi in terms of realistic Italian options who would add significant numbers to the gate.
But there are still a number of other talented riders currently out of contract who would be more enticing prospects than using a Suzuki test rider.
Most Moto2 riders will not want to walk away from their deals mid-season, and rightly so, especially if they’re fighting for a championship.
But why not stick Romano Fenati, still the most successful Moto3 rider of all time, onto the bike for a weekend just to see what he can do?
Out of contract since being rather unfairly dismissed by the Speed Up team after only five races, he’s available and would create some excitement thanks to both his talent and his chequered past. And the fact that the opportunity has come up at Misano, scene of Fenati’s downfall (well, one of them) when he lashed out at Moto3 rival Stefano Manzi at 140mph, would make for quite a story.
FIM MotoGP Stewards 📋
Black flag Romano Fenati for irresponsible riding 🏴#Moto2 #SanMarinoGP pic.twitter.com/sTqv6nhZer
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) September 9, 2018
In a time when MotoGP is struggling to convince audiences to either attend in person or pay to tune in from home, the series should be experimenting in every way it can.
The announcement that they’re shaking up the entire series’ format with the introduction of sprint races at every single round next year shows Dorna’s not afraid to take a risk – so why not push Suzuki to do something different at Misano?
