The opening round of the 2024 season last weekend in Qatar wasn’t just Marc Marquez’s very first (and second) MotoGP race riding a bike that wasn’t a Honda.
Working hard throughout winter to make significant changes to the RC213V, there have been hints of that improvement in performance since the radically different new bike first debuted at Valencia last November.
And while it’s obviously not quite there yet, 2020 world champion Joan Mir was optimistic after Sunday’s action in Qatar about what’s to come – even if he did somewhat self-sabotage his result at Lusail through inexperience.
Battling with fellow champion Fabio Quartararo, himself on a struggling Japanese machine in the form of the Yamaha M1, and with satellite LCR Honda rider Johann Zarco, Mir looked like he had the beating of the pair with only a few laps to go – only to run out of steam.
“Honestly, I can say that I’m happy,” enthused the Repsol Honda rider. “In the first laps, I overtook a lot of positions. I could see the front group. I was maintaining well the tyres behind Fabio for all the race.
“Then in the last five laps I decided to overtake him because I thought that I had something more. I started to push, I opened a gap of one second, and then I killed the tyre! In the last two laps I f***ked everything that I did in the five before. I f***ked everything I did all race in the last two laps.
“But I could fight a bit, I could enjoy to fight in the ‘Japanese Cup’ and even leading it!”
