Suzuki’s Joan Mir reckons he was “just a couple laps” adrift of launching a win challenge in the Argentina Grand Prix, the Spaniard ruing a sluggish first lap.
The 2020 MotoGP world champion showed off Suzuki’s impressive race speed as he worked his way back through the field from eighth on the grid, his GSX-RR lapping over eight-tenths-of-a-second adrift of pole-man Aleix Espargaro’s Aprilia on Saturday.
Mir took the chequered flag in fourth just 1.8 seconds behind the victorious Espargaro on Sunday having closed on the leading trio in the latter stages of the encounter, the one-time premier class race winner admitting that a slow start gave him a little too much work to do to try and put on a sustained victory tilt.
He concededthough that he wasn’t “overly happy” with his result bearing in mind the blistering pace he was able to show in the closing laps, Mir believing he needed “just a couple of laps” extra to try and challenge for his second career MotoGP success.
“I’m not overly frustrated with today, not overly happy with the result but satisfied with the performance,” said Mir.
“I lost a couple of places at the beginning of the race but then I was improving and getting the pace back, and this was the main thing today because I recovered quite a lot of time to the winner and I was coming.
“I was just missing a couple of laps, so without the first lap troubles I feel like we could have fought for something more today.
“Fourth is still good points for us, I got back a good feeling (with the bike) this weekend, in warm-up for example I definitely found something more and then in the race the speed was really there, so I’m really happy from that perspective.
“I’m happy with the improvements we have made, so we’ll keep trying to make steps in the direction we are going in Austin and hopefully go to Europe with more good points.”
Mir’s team-mate Alex Rins meanwhile took the chequered flag just 0.5s ahead to complete the podium finishers, he too reckoning he was left with simply too much time to make up to launch an attack for supremacy after having had to work his way forwards from seventh on the grid.
“I’m happy with this third position, for sure we need to qualify better because I lost a lot of time overtaking some riders,” explained Rins.
“I had a good start but not enough to go with (Jorge) Martin and Aleix (Espargaro), but we had a good race anyway.
“It was a very demanding one, I was missing a lot of traction and the grip was not so high for all the riders, but we are in good shape so I’m keen to go to Austin now which is a very nice track for us, and we’ll see what I can achieve there.
“The problem was starting from P7, for sure if we were able to start from better positions I could maybe have gone with them (leaders) because the pace was not so bad.
“The Suzuki now is in a really good place, we still need to work because we are a little too far away, but there is potential.”
Keyword: Mir ‘missing just a couple laps’ for victory bid