Joan Mir (Honda) is currently fighting a losing battle with the RC213V. No wonder he looks back fondly on 2020, when he was world champion with Suzuki and GSX-RR. One race in particular sticks out in his memory.
Joan Mir’s (Honda) MotoGP season was a disaster. The Spaniard finished 21st overall with 21 points. Teammate Luca Marini fared worse – the Italian finished 22nd with 14 points. Mir also had to endure 17 crashes in 2024.
The 27-year-old has not had a chance so far in his two years with Honda. He remembers the year 2020, when he won the world championship title with Suzuki, very happily. At the time, MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi rode his final season with the Yamaha factory team before moving to Petronas in 2021. Mir had a memorable duel with him for the podium at the Misano GP. “That was an important moment in my career. I was in eighth place halfway through the race, then I did one fast lap after another to catch up with the leading group of Bagnaia, Morbidelli and Vale,” Mir told mowmag.com. “I beat several drivers, which is not easy on this track. In the last stages I was fourth and I had the Italian in my sights. In there I had confidence that made me believe I could pass anyone. It was a good, clean trick. From then on going on, a streak of six podium finishes in seven races began. It was definitely a special moment.”
Mir finished third at Misano, denying Rossi his 200th place in the premier class of the motorcycle world championship. The Spaniard became world champion with only 14 races in the season affected by Corona. He won one race and got a total of seven podium finishes. He felt very good on the Suzuki GSX-RR and finished third overall in 2021. After a mixed season in 2022, in which Mir only finished 15th, from Suzuki surprisingly came and he moved to the Honda factory team.
“My riding style on the Suzuki was very good. I had to get used to the Honda, but that’s not very good if you don’t have a rear wheel, you always slide and on the exit corner you see that others are going twice as fast as you,” Mir complained. “With the GSX-RR I was able to control the throttle very well and manage the tires better than others, which allowed me to move forward. Now I can’t do that anymore because the tires wear out immediately because of the spinning rear wheel.”
