After going to the MotoGP season opener in Qatar, tipping the team to beat only to barely make it into the top six, the Suzuki 2022 campaign did not look much better on Friday in Indonesia.
Both Joan Mir and Alex Rins finished well off the pace at the end of the practice with Rins only provisionally in Q2 automatically in the 10th but Mir very far back in the 20th.
They insist that there is still no cause for alarm.
That’s because, even though things may not have gone quite as well as the couple had hoped on their first day of track action right on the new circuit on Lombok Island, they are both sure the reasons for theirs are lower than expected. Positions are factors. outside their control.
But while these factors may not be the riders’ fault, there is also no guarantee that they will be resolved before Sunday’s race – that’s not exactly music to the ears after the somewhat muted race in Qatar.
In Rins’ case, the cause is perhaps the most obvious, with illness preventing him from delivering on what he believes is his true potential on a track where Suzuki had a strong show in the three days of last month’s test.
He even admitted that only being in the top 10 press was above his own expectations because he felt bad.
But with rain forecasts for tomorrow’s FP3, it would have given Rins a welcome break from a full Q1 session by handing him a free pass directly to the second of the two qualifying stages of the day.
“It was a really hard day for us because I suffered a lot,” he explains.
“I had a really bad night, only slept four or five hours and did not feel well, a little sick.
“It’s not COVID, I did an antigen test and it was negative, but I think there’s something inside me.
“I did not expect to go into the top 10 in the end, but overall we did a good FP2 to put a few laps on the middle tire.
“It’s a bit of everything. The head, the stomach, the joints. Let’s see now if I can rest a little, and feel better for tomorrow.
On the other side of the garage, another aspect of the problems that slowed Rins, who also stopped his teammate.
With stretch temperatures sky high for this race, which reached almost 70ºC yesterday, Michelin went back to an older and stiffer rear tire carcass – and this radically changed Suzuki’s line-up of the test, which left Mir with a lot of work to tackle.
“The problem was in FP2,” he explains after a slightly damp (and slow) start to the day in FP1. “I had some mechanical problems, some problems with the front brake, and this made things more difficult.
“The new middle rear tire, in this condition, is heavy, and I could not do it in a good way.
“It probably takes more laps than what I did, but when the feeling is not there, it’s hard.
“It’s a little different because there is less grip in the corner and in the middle of the corner.
Sometimes you have a little bit of luck and you put in new tires and feel good right away, and sometimes you have to work a little harder.
“In our case, we have to work. I struggled a lot, especially with the middle ground.
“When I switched to the soft, the speed was there, but I did not press on the lap, just pressed to get the feeling back.
“But every round I pressed to improve, there was a yellow flag. It was a shame, but we know a little bit the direction we want to follow now.
The saving grace for the couple could still be found in Saturday’s FP4 session, traditionally the ones that most likely result in a race build-up thanks to running at a similar time of day as the race.
Still working to get a grip on the medium, Rins believes there is still a chance for the softer option to run – and, if fitness allows, he plans a thorough exploration of that Saturday afternoon before he goes into qualifying.
“We did a good FP2, suffering from a lack of grip on the middle, but when I put the soft one on, I was able to put up a good lap despite the yellow flags,” he said.
“I think the tire is not the best, the middle one – it’s too heavy. I had some trouble heating it.
“Already in the test we suffered with the medium and I went a lot with the softer.
“That medium had more or less the same effect as this one, but we did not get the soft one out of the test because it did not take the whole course distance – it was too soft.
“So now let’s put a few laps on the new soft tire and see if we can do the race with it, because otherwise we’ll suffer.”
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