Joan Mir: MotoGP’s Jekyll and Hyde

The 2020 MotoGP world championship is the year of the new kid on the block, with three first-time winners so far and a title challenger who only scored his first MotoGP podium last month.

Joan Mir’s stellar performances at the last four races – two seconds, a third and fourth – mark him out as the only rider with any real consistency and therefore the current title favourite in this topsiest-turviest of seasons, especially considering the fact that Suzuki had marked the Red Bull Ring and Misano as its bogey tracks of the truncated championship

Watching Mir and his Suzuki GSX-RR sweeping around a racetrack reminds me of something – 250 GP bikes.

In my opinion, the final decade of 250 GPs produced the finest racing motorcycles known to man. Those sublime two-stroke twins had 100 horsepower and weighed 100 kilos, so they were perfectly balanced and they allowed riders to do things they wouldn’t dare with other motorcycles.

At some circuits the 250s got close to the fastest 500 times, just because they could get into and through the corners so much faster than the doubly powerful 500s: rapier blades against battle axes.

Mir looks like he’s riding a 250 when he’s aboard the GSX-RR, not a 280-horsepower, 160-kilo four-stroke. He appears to be sat inside the bike, not on top of it, and he attacks corners with the kind of speed and commitment that made 250s so special. He is razor-sharp especially on corner entry, which is where he makes easy meat of his rivals.

I’m not the only one who sees the GSX-RR as a kind of MotoGP 250. That’s exactly what Aleix Espargaró thought when he rode the bike in its first two seasons, 2015 and 2016.

“The chassis is unbelievable!” the Spaniard told me back in 2016. “It’s like a 250: you can go as fast as you want into a corner and the bike turns more and more. It lets you turn where you want, lets you brake really late and lets you ride really aggressively.”

KTM rider Pol Espargaró, who Mir passed in the closing stages of Sunday’s race, is also impressed by the Suzuki, which is so rider-friendly that it allows riders to constantly flirt with the limit, a huge advantage over race distance.

“When I ride behind that bike – f**k! – it’s incredible the amount of mistakes those guys can make and still come back on line and still be able to play with the motorcycle. That’s really hard on a V4 – you make one mistake and you suffer for the next two corners.”

World championship leader Andrea Dovizioso sees the GSX-RR as the polar opposite of his Ducati Desmosedici.

“That bike is so balanced,” said the Italian at Misano. “From the outside it looks like it’s a bit easier compared to the other bikes to be consistent for the whole race, so at the end of races they are really fast because they use the tyre a bit less, so they can keep their speed. And for sure Mir is a very big talent,”

Ever since 2015 Suzuki has kept the faith in creating a finely balanced, rider-friendly inline-four that has what it takes to beat the fire-breathing V4s, using superior cornering performance to overcome superior straight-line performance.

Mir’s ride on Sunday was spectacular. He started on the fourth row and spent the first laps slicing his way through the pack. By half-distance he was fifth, 7.1sec behind the race leader. By the end he was second, 2.4sec behind the leader, so if he hadn’t lost so much time in the early stages he would’ve had something for Maverick Viñales and Pecco Bagnaia.

He had it all: speed, commitment, consistency and that razor-sharp blade for attacking other riders.

In other words, all he needs to do is improve his speed in qualifying.

Last month at Red Bull Ring, Mir qualified on the second and first rows and was in the lead group in both races. And he is confident he can get closer to the front of the grid this weekend at Barcelona.

The only problem Mir and his GSX-RR have is too much rear grip, which of course is at its worst in qualifying, with new tyres. Too much grip at the rear creates a traction imbalance with the front, which causes difficulties in corner entry and exit.