until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
It’s never a great sign when a MotoGP rider finds himself having to reaffirm his commitment to seeing out a two-year deal less than 12 months into it – but given Joan Mir’s remarkable paucity of results with Honda so far and admission that he’d considered walking away from MotoGP entirely, this was always going to be the case for the Spaniard.
And coming into the Barcelona weekend, he issued what was at first glance as emphatic a statement you could hope for.
“My priority is to continue. Obviously when a rider is having a bad time, teams come to speak to you, and try to show an interest,” he said – later emphasising that it was those rival teams rather than his own management that initiated any sort of contact.
“But honestly speaking in my career, if now I stop here, if I say, ‘I move on to another factory’ or whatever, I will feel like I’m totally failing. With myself, with everything.
“So, I don’t want to feel like that. I want to give [this] more chances, more opportunities.”
Cut it off there and the message is clear – Joan Mir is staying with Honda in 2024, and they will try to make this work.
Mir, though, did not cut it off there.
“But it’s true that also I want to do it if Honda does it. I have confidence in them, I trust them. But also I want to feel that they are doing something.
“This first part of the season was not enough, was not what I expected.
“And for sure, if I decide what I’ve already decided, I want answers.”
That, all of a sudden, does not sound like a rider ruling out a mid-contract change of scenery. Far from it.
And the three days of track action that followed at the Catalan Grand Prix venue suggested that, not only is there reasonable doubt over the Mir/Honda experiment continuing, but that whether it continues into 2024 or not, it might be unsalvageable.
Inconsistent flashes of impressive speed on the RC213V produced by Mir in the pre-season and in the Portimao opener are now a distant memory.
On the bright side, the Barcelona weekend was the first time this season that Mir completed the entire three-day schedule without hitting the deck, remaining, therefore, on 14 falls for the season.
On the not-so-bright side, everything else.
Lacking feel with the throttle, Mir always expected for this to be a rough weekend for himself and Honda, which he expected to be punished hugely by the tyre-chewing Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. “If here we are able to make a step or two, it will be a good thing for the next races, I’m sure. Because I think this scenario can be probably the worst one of all the races.”
That step looked nowhere to be found in the sprint, in which he finished last, “struggling like hell” to cope with the wind and with how it interacted with Honda’s new larger aero configuration.
Sunday was an improvement, “especially on the turning area”. Just… not for very long. Mir made up some ground early on, working his way past fellow Honda riders Takaaki Nakagami and Iker Lecuona, then went backwards to finish last again – and a more distant last at that.
“In the situation that we are in, with the [low] grip, with the electronics, this area that for me is a nightmare… in a track that you have to control very well, and you have to reduce the [rear tyre] spin as much as you can, I f***ed the tyre at the end of six or seven laps,” he said.
“The tyre was destroyed. I couldn’t stay on the bike. And all the [engine] maps I tried on the bike didn’t help at all.
“I was thinking to retire. But… when you finish the race, even if you finish last, it’s not the same as if you stop. So I decided to make the last laps carefully and bring the bike to the box.
“That’s the only thing that I could do. I couldn’t do more.
“From the start, once I was able to overtake the riders that I had in front, I started to push, I saw that the group that was in front, I was catching the group. Then I started to lose one second per lap, compared to my laptimes. And at the end two.
“This is the summary of the day.”
Mir’s final four laps were in the high-1m44s range. Back in his sole Moto2 year, in 2018, his fastest lap in that year’s Barcelona race was a 1m44.394s.
Perhaps this is partly explained by his choice of the soft rear (which he’d also run in the sprint) instead of the medium rear – team-mate Marc Marquez also ran the soft and also had a considerable laptime drop-off, but it’s not like the medium rear was holding up amazingly in those last laps.
“We are not in a position to go to find the last tenth,” acknowledged Mir. “If you change the tyre, it’s because you are finding the last tenth to be there.
“At the moment I don’t have the connection with the throttle to control. So, I just spin – and whatever the tyre I have, I destroy it.”
The thing about a weekend like this is, combined with those Repsol Honda colours, it generates a pervasive sense of deja vu.
Remember the final MotoGP rounds of Jorge Lorenzo’s career, languishing at the back on a Honda he no longer felt not just comfortable but safe on after glimpses of some progress earlier in the season? Remember Pol Espargaro, beginning his second and final year at Honda with an amazingly promising first round and ending it with a succession of races in which he, almost by his own admission, may as well have stayed at home?
They spiralled. And Mir looks to be spiralling, too. Perhaps the Barcelona-specific side of it won’t give him too much dread though – not just because he expected the weekend to be rough, but because he has been clear in his belief that there is no gold at the end of the rainbow with this particular RC213V anyway.
“We need a massive change, we need a different concept, a different story,” said Mir back on Thursday. “And from there start to make a step for the future.
“I don’t believe that in the Misano test we will find the bike of our dreams and with that bike we will win everything. I know what we are living here and I know what is the reality.”
But considering that upcoming post-Misano test next Monday is the one all eyes are on, and considering some huge indications are expected over what Honda’s final 2024 package will be, if what’s there isn’t a “different story” then why should it suddenly become that between now and the start of next season?
There must be confidence, from both parties, that a second season will be different. Another year like this – even if it doesn’t reach the astonishing depths of Barcelona 2023 – would be a waste of everyone’s time, at best, and a career-ender at worst.
