The excellent pre-season of the Suzuki riders was confirmed at the start of the Qatar Grand Prix on Friday, when Alex Rins, at the end of the day on Friday, set the best time, as well as reaching the highest top speed (355, 2 km / h). The leap forward in terms of power of the new GSX-RR 2022 therefore seemed to be concrete.
But the arrival of Saturday and qualifying, the traditional Achilles heel for the Hamamatsu drivers, showed once again that speed on the flying lap is still an open topic for the blue arrows. Joan Mir’s best lap put him in eighth position, in the third row, while Alex Rins was sentenced to start from the fourth (tenth). Both suffered a gap of four tenths of a second from poleman Jorge Martin.
No rider on a Suzuki has taken pole position since the brand’s return to MotoGP in 2015, between current and previous ones.
In the first two seasons in the premier class, Maverick Vinales’ GSX-RR started from the front row of the grid six times (in 36 Grands Prix). Even less so was his then teammate Aleix Espargaro, who was able to qualify on the front row on three occasions only in 2015.
The arrival of a fast driver on a lap like Andrea Iannone in 2017, and second place in his first Q2 (Losail), seemed to be the end of the brand’s problems and that the first pole position was only a matter of time. But the Italian finished his two years at Suzuki with only three front row starts.
Pole position continues to elude
With current riders, Alex Rins, who arrived in 2017, and Joan Mir, who arrived in 2019, things haven’t changed much despite the bike’s steady progress, and pole position continues to be taboo. And not only that, starting from the first two rows is practically forbidden for blue bikes.
In his first year at Suzuki (2017), Rins was unable to start a single race from the first two rows of the grid. In his second year he managed to finish second in the last Q2 in Valencia, as well as starting from the second row five times. In 2019 he got a first row (3rd in Assen) and only three second rows. In 2020 it went worse, only twice he was on the first two rows: 3rd in the Teruel GP (second race in Aragon) and 2nd in the European GP (second race in Valencia), in 14 weekends. Last year he did it again with only two finishes in the first two rows, 2nd in Portugal and 6th in Valencia, in 17 qualifying. The summary is that Rins, in 83 races with Suzuki, managed to start five times from the front row and nine times from the second row, without ever taking pole position.
Alex Rins, Suzuki MotoGP Team, arrives in the pits after his first outing in Q2 in Qatar.
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
It didn’t go much better for Mir, who only managed to start from the front row once (3rd in last year’s Algarve GP), while on just seven occasions he started from the second row: once in 2019, four times in 2020, the year in which he was MotoGP champion, and twice in 2021. In total, 50 grands prix with Suzuki, zero pole position, a front row and seven start from the second row. There is no doubt a problem here.
Seeing that both current and past riders have not been able to be regularly in the high areas of the grid, one can fall into the error of thinking that the problem is not so much with the riders, but with the bike and its particular DNA: a stable, steady and regular bike, but with little explosiveness.
Both Mir and Rins have grown tired of talking about this situation over the past couple of years, associating the difficulty of qualifying well with the GSX-RR’s lack of top speed. But now that the 2022 bike has arrived, with everyone in agreement in considering it a real rocket, one wonders if the real problem of the team on the flying lap is not in the bike but in the way in which it arrives and in which it is planned. time attacks.
Suzuki DNA
When in 2013 Suzuki entrusted Davide Brivio with the task of leading the brand’s return to MotoGP for the 2015 season, the Italian surrounded himself with a small team of extremely trustworthy people. Motivated people to work in the shadows, placing the success of the project in the personal limelight. The team has grown little by little with qualified personnel, but always with the same profile. They worked hard for more than a year, in the shadows, until test driver Randy de Puniet made his debut in the 2014 Valencia Grand Prix, a weekend that was a real disaster and in which two of the three available engines broke down. . The Frenchman, who was 20th on the grid, eventually retired.
Doubts and fears gripped the Suzuki men, who nevertheless continued to paw under Brivio’s umbrella to reach the surprising success of 2020: world champions on the 70th anniversary of the racing department and 20 years after the last title.
A placid, friendly and non-confrontational character has always permeated the DNA of the Hamamatsu team since its return to the premier class. Fair play is part of his way of being. A laudable style, but one that can backfire at the highest level of competition. To win in such a balanced sport, you need a touch of wickedness that Brivio never wanted or was able to impose.
The arrival of Livio Suppo
The image of the two Suzuki riders on Saturday in Qatar, taking to the track alone in search of the fastest lap, while “offering” their trail to the competitors for free, cannot be repeated. As much as Joan and Alex prefer to work alone and do things “well done”, the level of competition that MotoGP requires today, where every thousandth of a second is worth its weight in gold, forces them to rethink their strategy, to seek solutions and to get involved every time they hit the track.
Joan Mir, Suzuki MotoGP Team, talks to Livio Suppo, the new team manager.
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“I don’t know how the other riders have done their times, what is certain is that we did ours alone and pulling other riders, like Aleix Espargaro or Enea Bastianini, but I prefer to go out alone rather than desperately chasing a wheel”, summed up Rins at the end of the day.
To change this somewhat indulgent dynamic, the arrival of a new team manager like Livio Suppo could be crucial. The Turinese has a great deal of experience in the fight for the title (he has won seven) and in managing drivers who were, and are, real killers on the track, and this should be of colossal help.
The first and most important point must be to no longer give the wheel to any direct rival. And the second, albeit more complicated, and this is where Suppo has to intervene, is to take advantage, when possible, of the trail of rivals, even if it is not Joan and Alex’s style.
“For next time we may have a slightly different strategy, and for us, who are used to always going alone in qualifying, it will be more important to do it by looking for a wheel or a trail, which always helps,” said Mir, who started. to assimilate it to Losail, after having pulled Marc Márquez in Q2.
Mir and Rins must forget the old quarrels of the past, which lead nowhere, and change their philosophy. The icing on the cake, which would be in line with Suzuki’s DNA, would be for both riders to help each other, get out on the track together and give each other a wake. This would be the first major success for the new team manager and, who knows, the way to hit the big S brand’s first pole position since its return to the premier class.
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