Mir: Tech freeze 'good' for Suzuki, Miller man to beat!
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Joan Mir admits the MotoGP technical freeze is ‘good news’ for Suzuki after such a strong pre-season.But the long covid-19 layoff means, at least from a bike fitness perspective, he predicts Jack Miller could be the man to beat when the championship finally starts!That’s because the Australian returned home as soon as the Qatar season opener was cancelled.The Pramac Ducati star has thus been able to continue training on a motorcycle since early March (see below), while most of his rivals have been confined indoors under lockdown conditions in Europe.”I’m happy because in the pre-season the target was to stay in the top five and we were in this position,” said Mir, who is among a group of MotoGP riders based in Andorra.”Now after this [coronavirus] situation I don’t know what position we will be in, but the truth is that I think the first one [to beat] will be Jack Miller, who can go on a motorbike every day!”After Jack, it can be a couple of Spaniards and now Italians can go out with a bike again… So it could be a little bit like this [when we restart]!” View this post on Instagram Epic long weekend with the neighbours! Vid @sm.media__A post shared by Jack Miller (@jackmilleraus) on May 4, 2020 at 1:01am PDTIn terms of his own training programme, Mir – recently confirmed as staying alongside Alex Rins at Suzuki for the 2021 and 2022 – is having to “improvise a little”, highlighting that government restrictions are “different for every country”.”At the moment we cannot go to Spain, it’s forbidden,” he explained. “But maybe in the next couple of weeks there will be a deal between Andorra and Spain so we can go. This would be the best news for me and the other riders here, because in Andorra there are a lot of riders.”Andorra has said that [for now] professional riders can go out just for a couple of hours to practice some Trials riding in one place. This is good news but not enough because there are a lot of riders, like the Italian guys, who can go out now. The ones that are living in Tavullia can go to the [VR46] ranch and these things.”In our case we can go out only with the Trials bike. So we will start with this bike to gain a bit of [familiarity] with a motorcycle again. And then the week after, if everything continues in a good way [with the restrictions], I hope to start with the motocross bike if they allow us. Or with the speedbike, pocketbike, or karting.”4″But after a couple of months not using any bike, it’s important to start easy and not immediately at 100% because you can have some injury.” Tech freeze ‘good news’ for SuzukiTurning to the cost-cutting technical freeze – which prevents engine design being modified until the end of 2021, and delays this year’s aerodynamic upgrade until next season – Mir said:”The truth is that it’s good news for us that development is frozen because we have a good base. As we saw in Qatar and Sepang, the 2020 Suzuki package is working really well.”But he also underlined that factories have been continuing development in other areas of the bikes, as best they can.”Some other manufacturers were in a worse position than us, but it’s also difficult to say for sure now, because I know that everybody is trying to improve at home with the computers, data. This is not forbidden.”Rins and Mir both finished within 0.271s of leader Maverick Vinales (Yamaha) during the final pre-season test at Losail on February 24, which was the last time anyone rode a MotoGP machine.However, it was the consistently high pace of the GSX-RR in both Qatar and Malaysia that impressed rivals the most.
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