Having gone into the MotoGP season-opener in Qatar tipped as the team to beat only to barely scrape into the top six, Suzuki’s 2022 campaign didn’t appear to get much better on Friday in Indonesia.
Both Joan Mir and Alex Rins finished well off the pace at the end of practice with Rins just provisionally sneaking into Q2 automatically in 10th but Mir all the way back in 20th.
They insist there isn’t any cause for alarm just yet.
That’s because, while things might not quite have gone the way the pair hoped on their first day of track action proper at the new circuit on the island of Lombok, they’re both certain the reasons for their lower-than-anticipated positions are factors outside their control.
But while those factors may not be the riders’ fault, there’s also no certainty they’ll be resolved ahead of Sunday’s race – which isn’t exactly music to their ears after the somewhat subdued race in Qatar.
In Rins’ case, the cause is perhaps the most obvious, with illness preventing him from delivering on what he believes is his real potential at a track where Suzuki had a strong showing in last month’s three days of testing.
He even conceded that just squeezing into the top 10 was above his own expectations given how unwell he felt.
But with rain forecast for tomorrow’s FP3, it could well have delivered Rins a welcome respite from a crowded Q1 session by handing him a free pass directly to the second of the day’s two qualifying stages.
“It was a really tough day for us, because I suffered a lot,” he explained.
“I had a really bad night, sleeping only four or five hours and not feeling good, feeling a bit sick.
“It’s not COVID, I did an antigen test and it was negative, but I think it’s something inside me.
“I didn’t expect to go into the top 10 in the end, but overall we did a good FP2 to put some laps on the medium tyre.
“It’s a little bit of everything. The head, the stomach, the joints. Let’s see now if I can rest a little bit, and feel better for tomorrow.”
On the other side of the garage, another aspect of the issues slowing Rins that also halted his team-mate.
With track temperatures sky high for this race, reaching nearly 70ºC yesterday, Michelin have reverted to an older and stiffer rear tyre carcass – and this has radically altered Suzuki’s set-up from the test, leaving Mir with plenty of work to tackle.
“The problem was in FP2,” he explained after a somewhat damp (and slow) start to the day in FP1. ”I had some mechanical issues, some issues with the front brake, and this made things more difficult.
“The new medium rear tyre, in this condition, is difficult, and I wasn’t able to make it work in a good way.
“It probably needs more laps than what I was doing, but when the feeling isn’t there it’s difficult.
“It’s a little bit different, because there’s less grip going into the corner and in the middle of the corner.
“Sometimes you are a bit lucky and you put in new tyres and feel good straight away, and sometimes you have to work a bit more.
“In our case, we have to work. I was struggling a lot, especially with the medium compound.
“When I switched to the soft, the speed was there, but I wasn’t pushing for the lap, just pushing to get the feeling back.
“But every lap I pushed to improve, there was a yellow flag. It was a shame, but we know a little bit the direction that we want to follow now.”
The saving grace for the pair might yet be found in Saturday’s FP4 session, traditionally the one most likely to yield a race set-up thanks to running at a similar time of day to the race.
So far still working to come to grips with the medium, Rins believes there might yet be a chance to race the softer option – and, fitness permitting, he plans to carry out a thorough exploration of that on Saturday afternoon before heading into qualifying.
“We did a good FP2, suffering from a lack of grip on the medium, but when I put the soft in I was able to put in one good lap despite the yellow flags,” he said.
“I think the tyre is not the best one, the medium one – it’s too hard. I had some problems to warm it.
“Already in the test we were suffering with the medium and I was going a lot with the soft one.
“That medium had more or less the same effect as this one, but we don’t have the soft from the test because it didn’t last all the race distance – it was too soft.
“So now let’s put some laps on the new soft tyre and see if we can do the race with it, because otherwise we’ll suffer.”
