Joan Mir crashed and retired for the second consecutive race, this time at the MotoGP Dutch GP. The ongoing struggles of Honda persist, but the 2020 champion’s strategy remains resolute: to push the limits even if it means risking a crash.
Regarding the crash and his feelings during the race, the Spaniard explained: ‘At turn 3, with throttle, I leaned half degree more and I lost the front. It’s quite unpredictable, to be honest. The thing is that is difficult for me during the race to manage these situations, because in the race I was following the group that was [Marco] Bezzecchi there, then Fabio [Quartararo] was there, [Jack] Miller, and a couple more of them in front. And I was going with them. I was breaking away from a couple of riders that I had behind. I was feeling… not very good, to be honest, with the fuel tank full, with all the fuel there the bike was difficult to ride. But then was getting better, I was recovering some time to that group. And then I tried a little bit more in Sector 1, a sector where I’m able to recover everything what I lose on acceleration. I tried a bit more and I lost the front. That is a bit our story’.
Mir admitted surprise at the improvements of his competitors and emphasized that playing it safe and avoiding a crash was not an option: ‘We have the same package as the previous races, the lap times that they are doing are huge. We are going fast, but the thing is that the others improved a lot, it’s unbelievable. How the accelerate out of the corners makes me feel angry! What I also could do was to slow a bit down half a second and finish 14 seconds and that’s it. But it’s not what I want; as a rider I want always more, I want to try, and if this means going to the ground, maybe one day I don’t go to the ground and I’m in front, so, let’s see’.
Regarding his recent crashes, Mir finds them intriguing as they occur in unusual moments: ‘Honestly, the last crashes that I had, they were mostly with throttle. So there is something happening on our bike. Normally when you start to open the throttle you transfer the weight to the rear and you shouldn’t really crash there. The typical crash is when you release the front brake, but in my case most of them are with throttle. And we have to analyze this, because the bike in that moment is quite critical’.
In Mir’s view, the incidents are more related to the bike’s geometry rather than the tyres: ‘It’s more the geometry, how the bike works at the moment is not ideal. Probably is not picking the front enough and we don’t transfer into the rear. Then we don’t have grip’.