until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
After what was on paper a disastrous winless 2021 season for the 2020 MotoGP world champion Joan Mir, thanks in large part to a Suzuki GSX-RR that simply didn’t make the same step forward as many of its rivals for last year, pre-season testing for 2022 was perhaps more crucial for the Hamamatsu firm than any other manufacturer.
And, worryingly for the other manufacturers, it seems like the Japanese team has got it absolutely right.
It’s no secret that Mir has been piling the pressure onto the team ever since his 2021 title defence amounted to naught. Eventually salvaging third in the overall standings was a small consolation prize – but it wasn’t what he had set out to achieve.
As a result, he’s been ramping up the pressure on Suzuki in his public statements, even hinting as recently as last Friday’s team launch that, should the 2022 bike not be as good as he expected, that he could be forced to look elsewhere for 2023 and beyond, after his current contract expires.
Yet, after a lot of hard work both over the winter and over much of 2022, even despite Suzuki’s factory engineers and race team being forcibly separated by the coronavirus pandemic, it seems like they’ve hit the nail on the head – with Fabio Quartararo describing the new GSX-RR as his “biggest surprise” from the test along with the revised Honda, and others also impressed by the bike.
“Here I saw Suzuki very, very strong,” Aprilia boss Massimo Rivola told The Race in an exclusive interview at Sepang.
“To me in general, it seems like the bike that is ready to race tomorrow, more than anyone else is.”
That’s a sentiment echoed by Mir himself, too, with the Spaniard admitting that he too was feeling confident going into the opening race in Qatar in a month’s time after a highly successful test.
“We are close, we are happy, we have improved our top speed and we’re there now in the middle,” he said in his post-test media scrum. “That’s really important, because we know we have a fast race bike, but always to fight with the Ducatis, with the engine we had, it was difficult to overtake. Always the same story in every race, difficult to overtake.
“So a little bit more power is a good thing for me, and I expect with only this advantage to be a lot better. The character is the same, in the first touch, and on the bike alone you don’t feel it. But on the data you see it, and when you follow someone you feel it.
“I tested almost everything, but we have to confirm a lot of things in [the second test in] Mandalika.
“Today has been a really important day to understand the potential of the bike, because the electronics were working better and I was able to be quite fast and really consistent on lap pace.”
And while he might not have ended the test as high as he would have liked in terms of time attack mode, Mir – 12th-fastest in the test – says that there was an explanation for that, too.
“We made the wrong choice for the time attack. We only had two tyres, we started with the soft [front] and soft [rear], and I missed it. I wasn’t making a good laptime, then I stopped and restarted with the front soft already used and it was really difficult to make the laptime. I made it with the used rear and the hard front, so we are really close and there is a margin.
“We’re not here to make a time attack. We haven’t won any races, but I’m satisfied. I’m not super happy, because there is work to do, but I am satisfied. I can’t say that I’m happy, but I’m jet-lagged!”
