Joan Mir and Alex Rins finished sixth and seventh respectively at the opening round of the 2022 MotoGP season in Qatar.
It was a disappointing opening round of the year, after both riders and the updated GSX-RR had shown so much promise in testing and during the practice sessions at the Losail International Circuit, but ultimately the results meant solid points on the board and the performances highlighted the potential of the package.
Mir made a strong start to his race and climbed as high as fourth place, joining the battle for the podium. Sadly, as the laps ticked by, he began to lose rear grip and couldn't progress any higher. He dropped two positions to finish sixth.
Rins had a harder time off the start but made progress. After breaking free of the traffic behind him he settled into seventh place. He began pushing to bridge the gap to his teammate, but he, too, suffered rear grip issues and elected to bring the bike home instead of risking too much.
Mir said, "Honestly it has been disappointing, I was expecting more from this race. Our bike has definitely improved and that was clear to us: the rhythm and speed were better than last year.
"I started out well and I felt good at the beginning of the race, but then I started to lose the feeling with the rear and it became very difficult to make progress, especially in the last laps, and I couldn’t get more than sixth. So, this is something we’ll need to look into, to try and get more grip, for the coming races."
Rins added, "It was a bit strange, because I suffered a little bit in the first part of the race when it came to overtaking the other riders. But then when I was alone on the track, and wanting to close the gap up to Joan, I pushed a lot but I didn’t feel very good in the corners; So instead of ending in the gravel I wanted to bring the bike home.
New team manager, Livio Suppo, said, "For sure these aren’t the results we hoped for, especially after the strong pace on Friday, but anyway we still feel positive because the race was super-fast up front and both Joan and Alex had good pace. We also saw how much the bike has improved on the straights, so that will be useful in the coming races.
"We need to analyse the data to understand exactly what we lacked today. It’s a long championship and it’s good that both our riders scored points and got off to a decent start; we are looking forward to Indonesia in a couple of weeks."