Joan Mir from seventh to eighteenth in a few laps during the Phillip Island GP. In the pits the discovery of what went wrong.
For Joan Mir, 2022 will be the worst career year in MotoGP. The 2020 champion of the class MotoGP he does not collect points from the Assen GP, the last stage before the summer break. Upon returning from holidays, he remedied a terrible crash at the start of the Austrian Grand Prix which, between attempts to participate and forfeits, kept him off the track for eight weeks, until the weekend in Australia.
An ankle injury that did not require entering the operating room, but that required a long period of rest. When last Sunday he crossed the line in 18th place it was thought there were some problems related to his physical condition, but when he returned to the pits he made the incredible discovery: the tires had been destroyed due to a faulty pressure gauge in the pits which led to the error of the mechanics who set the pressure beyond that recommended by the supplier Michelin.
Joan Mir disappointed with the 2022 season
The race hadn’t started badly for Joan Mir, who started from 14th position after a qualifying not exactly flawless. The Suzuki rider immediately gained seven positions in the first four laps, reaching seventh place. But from the fifth lap of the Australian GP something started to go wrong, he lost positions in a whirlwind way. As the internal temperature of the tires rose his GSX-RR it became difficult to tame and lost grip at the rear. “Eventually the tire broke, I suffered a lot of slippage on the rear wheel“.
When on lap five he saw himself being overtaken by many opponents on the straight, he realized that something was wrong on his Suzuki. When he sat down with his technicians and analyzed the data, the almost surreal discovery: “We found that the tire pressure was too high. Both tires were damaged, the rear a little more“Commented Joan Mir. “We found that there was a problem with the pressure gauge air in the box. It wasn’t just 0.2 or 0.3 bar …“.
There remains a bitter draft especially in light of the victory of his teammate Alex Rins. “After missing four GPs due to accidents and injuries, I needed a good result and here we had the chance to reach it“, Concluded the Majorcan Suzuki rider. “Physically I’m happy, mentally not so much“.
