Joan Mir says he found it tough to make progress in the Spanish GP after he struggled with braking due to the soft front tyre he opted to use.
The Suzuki racer recovered to finish fifth in the race after starting tenth for the Jerez encounter, though he said following the outing that he found it tough move up further after finding it “difficult to stop the bike” with his choice of the soft front tyre, the reigning MotoGP champion unhappy with the amount of movement the tyre introduced to his GSX-RR.
While conceding that the soft front compound rubber was the “safest” choice for him based on his running on the harder option earlier in the weekend-the Spaniard the only front runner to opt for the soft front for the race- he reckoned the combination of the tyre and dirty air thrown from the rear of his rivals machines made it tough for him to move forward throughout the event.
“We have to be cleverer and also try to start higher up the grid next time, also it didn’t help that the front soft tyre was not the best choice for the race, it was difficult to stop the bike and I felt a lot of movement but it was the safest choice for me,” explained Mir.
“It was my mistake (running wide at Turn 6), it is really difficult to overtake here because once you are half-a-second behind the other bike you start to struggle under braking and the front tyre gets overworked.
“When I went wide I knew it would difficult to overtake again, I think it was happening to everyone as (Franco) Morbidelli was stuck behind others and he had the same problems as did Taka (Nakagami), it’s just what normally happens at Jerez.
“The points for fifth though is OK, we’ll take it.”
Rins: “Pace really good” despite crash and lost winglet
Team-mate Alex Rins meanwhile saw a promising Spanish GP performance disappear after crashing at Turn 6 on only the third tour while running seventh just behind Mir, the three-time premier class race winner explaining that a small bump on the outside caused him to run out to the dirty part of the track and lose the front of his machine as a result.
A philosophical Rins rued at what could have been possible had the crash not happened, the Spaniard running at a pace on par if not a little faster than the front-runners after rejoining despite losing one of the winglets that control the flow of the GSX-RR’s aerodynamics.
“Normally coming out of the right hand corner coming onto the straight (Turn 5) we go to the right of the track, then go back and left and then right as we enter the next right handed corner,” said Rins.
“I hit a small bump as I was a bit wider (with Mir on inside) and with the full tank and everything I felt it a bit harder than normal so the rear tyre lifted, so I had to come off the brakes and run slightly wide and then on the dirty part of the track I lost the front.
“We lost one of the winglets in the crash so the aerodynamics definitely were not the same on the bike, but my pace was still really good and quite close to the front guys and in the final ten laps I was a tenth or two faster than the leaders.”
