Joan Mir had little reason to smile or feel encouraged during the MotoGP test day in Barcelona. The Repsol Honda rider found no updates to his Honda RC213V, contrary to his expectations.
The 2020 champion, who set the 15th fastest time, commented: ‘I’m not very happy. It was a very unproductive day, that’s it. Everything we tried, we had tried before – we didn’t have any new upgrades that allowed us to be faster. We were working with our standard package and a package that in the past wasn’t working. So, you can imagine that the day wasn’t the day that I expected’.
Asked if Honda is working hard enough, Mir replied: ‘This is what I thought, but the reality is that here I expected much more’.
In this test, not even the new test rider, Aleix Espargaró, had any updates for the RC213V. The lack of new developments appears to be due to timing constraints. However, Honda has a test scheduled in Jerez next week, and Mir hopes for a better situation: ‘We just need to get the new stuff as earlier as possible, to try to close the distance to the first ones. I’m very surprised by this day, I expected much more, but I hope that next week we can have more things’.