Suzuki ride-height back for Aragon, Mir seeking stable tyre grip

After removing its new rear ride-height device at Silverstone, Alex Rins has confirmed that Suzuki is set to re-join the other MotoGP manufacturers with the system at Aragon.

"We will have the rear device for this weekend," Rins said on Thursday. "We removed it at Silverstone because I was trying to use it in FP1 and FP2 and there was not enough time to pull [activate] it with the bike going down, also on brakes.

"Let's see if we can use it on this track, apparently yes, because exiting on the back straight we are doing a lot of wheelie and also before the corkscrew there is a lot of wheelie, so maybe we will use a lot."

Rins still managed second place and a first podium of the season at Silverstone without the anti-wheelie aid, but – just as last year – Suzuki arrives at Aragon still seeking a first victory of the season.

"It’s been a long time and a lot of improvements on our bike but also the other bikes," said Rins, who went on to break Suzuki's 2020 victory drought by winning at the first of last October's two Aragon rounds.

"I think this year the rivalry is super high, and we need to take care not only with the Yamahas and Ducatis, but also with the Hondas, the KTMs. In Silverstone the top six were from six different bikes. So everything will be so close.

"Aragon GP is like a home GP, I'm so happy to start the engines again here, especially after Silverstone because we are coming from a podium, second position, so my expectations are exactly the same."

While team-mate and reigning champion Joan Mir still holds a fading chance of the 2021 crown, sitting 65-points from Fabio Quartararo, Rins' earlier run of DNFs mean he is simply looking "race-by-race, trying to do the maximum podiums possible and that's all."

While Rins produced his best race of the season at Silverstone, Mir was among a number of riders to struggle badly with unexpected tyre grip issues.

In Mir's case it was the soft front that caused him to fade from fifth place back to ninth.

While Rins felt it may have been a mistake for Mir not to have joined him on the medium front, the #36 was sure that, not for the first time this season, something abnormal had happened with his tyre.

"I tried the soft during practice and it was not the best tyre to make the full race distance. I had a lot of graining. So for this reason I chose the medium," Rins said. "A couple of riders took the soft, Joan also, and I was a bit surprised because here in Suzuki we are sharing information, we don’t have a wall, and I think he was knowing that the soft was maybe a bit [too] soft. But it was also his decision."

But also speaking on Thursday, Mir insisted: "I don't think it was the setup of the bike. The team gave me their explanation of what happened, and the only thing that I can say is that I hope that this doesn't happen again, because it conditioned all the weekend, and it can also condition the whole championship. So let's try to be positive for this one."

The #36 declined to share what the team had told him, but insisted he wasn't being gagged from criticising Michelin.

"It's not that we are not allowed to speak about these things. It's more that inside of me, I want to think that Michelin is doing everything they can to manage this situation as best as they can," Mir explained.

"But it's true that in the last races, not only for me, also for different riders, they complained a lot about this [grip loss] thing. And if something happens one time, okay, you don't complain. But it's true that if it happens more often, it's more difficult to keep the mouth shut.

"I think they do everything they can to give good tyres to everyone, but for some reason, something happened in the previous races. So let's look forward."

Mir added: "It's so unpredictable, because normally, you keep a tyre for Sunday, and you have to think that this tyre will work, and the normally they work. But sometimes something happens and then the grip is not the same that what we expected.

"And this is something that doesn't only happen on Sunday, it also happens on Friday, that the grip level is changing more than what we expected from the tyre. And this is something difficult to work, because you work on the setup of the bike, you improve it, and then you move to another tyre and if the grip has changed, then all the bike changes. And you have to change again. And we don't have so much practice time to try again.

"So when this happens, it becomes very difficult to become constant in the top positions. But anyway, it's true that it was getting worse in the last races, but before it was not like this.

"So I think that something was happening in the last races and in the last ones because we are not used to this change of grip level in this way."

Fellow title contender Francesco Bagnaia, who suffered a severe loss of grip from his rear tyre in the Silverstone race, said on Thursday that Michelin had "recognised that my rear tyre was not competitive".

Rins added: "In almost every Safety Commission meeting we are talking about pre-heated tyres and the quality of the tyres, but in the end it's very difficult to make a lot of tyres with exactly the same quality, no?"