Joan Mir narrowly missed out on the top ten in the MotoGP Qatar Grand Prix. The Repsol Honda rider was the best among the Japanese manufacturers, finishing 11th in yesterday’s race at Losail.
The Spaniard told the press he was pleased with his performance: ‘It wasn’t bad. Honestly, let’s say I’m happy because I made… the first laps weren’t bad, I overtook many riders – I started 18th or whatever. And then I was very close to the front riders, I could see the front group. I was managing the tires well and everything, and I was behind Fabio [Quartararo] the whole race’.
In the final phase, Mir risked overtaking the opponent, admitting that this ended up creating difficulties for him later: ‘Then, in the last five laps I decided to overtake him because I thought I had something more. I started to attack, opened a one-second gap and then killed the tire. In the last two laps I fought with everything I did in the last five. But I managed to fight a bit, I managed to enjoy a bit, fight with the Japanese cup [Honda and Yamaha] – even leading the Japanese cup. But then I was too optimistic in the last five laps. I didn’t expect such a big drop in the tire, but it’s true that we didn’t do 22 laps in a row in any test. So we see here that we have to manage the electronics in a different way, or more conservatively, in the race. But we learned some things, we got good information‘.
Now, the 2020 champion is expecting news for the Portuguese GP: ‘I think in the next race we will have some new things that we asked for in the tests. And if the track suits our bike a little better, maybe we can take another step. Here if we are close to the top ten with our bike it’s not a disaster‘.
