Mir seeking early braking gains – “we’re not far”

Joan Mir has insisted he can be fighting among MotoGP’s “top guys” should he find a remedy for the early braking issues that ruined his chances of a top six finish at Aragon.

After a weekend of promise, the class rookie was beset by problems when braking with a full tank of fuel and new tyres at the beginning of the Aragon outing as he dropped from ninth to 15^th on lap one. Mir then came close to hitting Jorge Lorenzo at the final double left on lap three, leading him to rejoin in last.

His subsequent recovery to 14^th place, five seconds back of team-mate Alex Rins proved the potential was there. This weekend’s Thai Grand Prix should provide a chance to understand further the problems he has encountered “at some tracks.”

“Sincerely I didn’t have time to check [what happened at the start of the Aragon race],” said Mir. “The team has worked on this really hard. We are trying to find a solution.

“Now I have to go there to understand what I have to improve in that area. In the end it’s what we need to be fighting with the top guys because we are not far. We’ll see at this track how it is and I think we can do a race here.

“In some tracks [I had this problem before], yes. At some tracks it was difficult. Like I said this issue in the first laps is a big problem. If you lose a lot of time, a lot of positions, this is not good if you want to be on the podium.

“This is the critical point that we have to improve. That’s it because we are really happy with the potential we have at the moment. I want to show the potential now. We will see.

“It’s on the brakes. I don’t stop. I hit Jorge from behind in the last corner. We saw a video and it was not trying overtake or anything like that. I was just [keeping hold of] the bars and the bike wasn’t stopping. It was strange but we are here to work.”

Was he pleased with the Aragon weekend in spite of the end result? “Yeah. We checked also the lap times when I was along and it was really, really good. I’m happy for this.

“Even with the problems we had we arrived really close to Alex. We recovered a lot of distance to him. This is our goal. It means that we are in good shape and we will see.”

And what of his chances at the Chang International Circuit? “I don’t know, honestly. Last year I struggled a little bit. In the test I remembered they were really fast but here for some reason they struggled.

“We will see. It’s something I don’t know. I will tell you tomorrow. I think it can be a good track for us with the flowing corners.”