Joan Mir on Suzuki’s departure from MotoGP: It’s a difficult situation for everyone and we don’t know what’s coming. What did he say about the Czech fans?

Suzuki’s departure is a big topic for both the team’s riders and the whole of MotoGP. And it’s not just that topic that Spanish rider Joan Mir spoke to Ruik about. In addition, he spoke about the race at Silverstone in the UK and did not forget to say hello to the Czech fans.

It was absolutely shocking information for many when Suzuki announced at the beginning of the season that they would be leaving MotoGP at the end of the year. However, this is not an unknown matter for the Japanese team.

Moreover, the legendary team has already withdrawn from MotoGP once before, namely at the end of the 2011 season due to financial difficulties. After that, the Japanese stable came up with a completely “rebuilt” concept and returned to MotoGP in 2015 as a factory brand.

Suzuki registered its first win after a spectacular comeback in 2016 on the occasion of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Maverick Viñales drove to first place then. It even won the World Championship title in the 2020 season, when it was Mir who dominated the riders’ championship.

This year, however, Suzuki is struggling for results and it’s also due to the fact that the team simply doesn’t have much motivation to keep working. In the current riders’ championship standings, Alex Rins is in eighth place with 84 points, while Mir is as high as twelfth with 77 points.

Suzuki’s departure from MotoGP has haunted not only the riders, but also all the employees associated with the Japanese stable. In an interview with selected media, including Ruik, Mir spoke about this very issue.

Mir’s statement

“Yes, it’s a very difficult time, none of us know what’s coming. It’s not something that affects only one rider, it affects everybody,” Mir explained in the interview.

“It’s difficult to handle this situation because I don’t like the uncertainty of not knowing what’s coming. It’s one thing if the problem concerns one rider. It’s even worse if none of us knows where he’s going to work next year, everyone has the same problem,” he continues.

“Sometimes people forget that, we really feel it a lot. But we are just a small group of people. Many more work in the factory and don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s something that doesn’t help us much at the moment,” admits the 2020 champion.

Still, Suzuki needs to improve its performance and the British Grand Prix was a very promising opportunity. Rins even led the twelfth race of the season, but then fell down the standings, finishing the Silverstone race in seventh place, Mir did not finish.

Ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix, what did Mir say about Silverstone specifically and what did he initially expect from it?

Silverstone

“This track is one of the special ones, I’m marking this as a special race in my calendar. It’s a challenging track where you always have to perform well and where you have to show your driving skills. There are a lot of fast and sharp corners,” he said in an interview.

“We’ll see what I can do with it. I had some problems with the front tyre last year, but I still kept a good pace in the race. But because of that I wasn’t able to get the result I wanted, so we’ll see what this Grand Prix brings,” said the 24-year-old Spaniard.

However, as Mir also added afterwards, he doesn’t have much experience of the MotoGP circuit. In 2016 and 2017 he raced here in the Moto3 championship, and in the 2018 Moto2 season it was raining, so his bike had a very different set-up than in ideal dry conditions.

To make matters worse, he was injured in Brno in 2019, making it impossible for him to make it to the then Grand Prix. 2020 was associated with the coronavirus and MotoGP didn’t come to the UK at all. So his only experience of a MotoGP race at Silverstone is last year’s ninth place.

So this could also be one aspect of why Mir didn’t fare well in Sunday’s race and why he didn’t finish the British Grand Prix.

MotoGP is followed by a large number of fans in the Czech Republic. Is there anything you would like to say to your fans in the Czech Republic?

“Yes, definitely. I’m really sad because in the last two years we couldn’t go to Brno to race. But I hope we will come back in the future. Brno has always been special for me and the fans have always been great. This is an incentive for MotoGP to return there one day,” Mir told the Czech fans.

Source: MotoGP