Opinion: Joan Mir is about to take control of MotoGP’s 2020 title fight

Circumstances have been strange in 2020 for the MotoGP World Championship. First it was postponed a week before it was due to get underway due to COVID-19, then it restarted with two horrendously hot races in Jerez, where Marc Marquez broke his arm and Fabio Quartararo became a first-time premier class winner. Since then the championship has been a mess, the six rounds so far showing no real dominant force in the points battle. 

That continued in Misano, as Fabio Quartararo crashed out and Andrea Dovizioso finished seventh to claim the championship lead. The #04 has 76 points, which is 50.7% of the total points available so far this season. His results have gone: 3-6-11-1-5-7. In a normal year, this points tally, these results, would not even have you in the frame for the championship, let alone have you leading it. 

For example, last year Marc Marquez scored 115 points in the first six races to be leading the championship at that point. His results sheet was: 2-1-DNF-1-1-2. Aside from the crash in Texas, Marquez was in the top two in every race. In the races that he did finish of the first six he dropped only 10 points, and the three wins he picked up would, this year, give him enough points to be behind Dovizioso by only one point at this stage, even if he did not score in the other three.

In the first six races of 2019, Dovizioso went 1-3-4-4-2-3, scoring 103 points. At the same point this season, Dovizioso is 27 points shy of his tally from last year.

Why is this? Well, Dovizioso has put a lot of it down to the new Michelin rear tyre for 2020, which has a different casing from the one used in 2019 and offers more grip. However, the dramatic change in the characteristics of the tyre for 2020 means teams are still trying to understand exactly how it should be used and treated, both off the bike and on it. This, combined with the incredibly tight field in the 2020 premier class, is what is producing such inconsistent results. 

Those inconsistencies leave the championship in the position where Alex Rins, who is 12th in the championship, is only 36 points away from the championship lead. Despite his humerus fracture in the first race, the #42 is still in the fight for the world title, despite not scoring a single podium as yet in 2020. 

In fact, this year not a single rider has finished on the podium more than twice, those riders with two being: Fabio Quartararo, Maverick Vinales, Andrea Dovizioso, Franco Morbidelli, Joan Mir and Jack Miller. Furthermore, of those riders, only Dovizioso, Morbidelli and Mir have scored podiums in more than one track: Dovizioso’s coming in Jerez and the Red Bull Ring; Morbidelli’s in Brno and Misano; and Mir’s in the Red Bull Ring and Misano. 

Perhaps it is to these three riders that we should look if we want to find the rider, or riders, that can grasp hold of the championship in the coming races.

We have already looked at the results of Dovizioso, and seen his inconsistency, but what about the others? For Morbidelli, things started slowly in Jerez with a fifth place and a mechanical retirement. Since then, he has gone 2-DNF-15-1. Of course, Morbidelli’s involvement in the crash with Zarco in the Austrian Grand Prix cannot be forgotten, and that made him cautious in the Styrian Grand Prix the next weekend which resulted in that 15th place. It is also true that the Red Bull Ring was an especially bad circuit for Yamaha, whose best rider in both races was Valentino Rossi, the 41-year-old going 5-9 over the two Grands Prix. With that in mind, it is also worth considering that in the places where the Yamaha has worked, Morbidelli has excelled, fighting for the podium in both Jerez races, taking his maiden premier class rostrum in Brno and his maiden MotoGP win in Misano. Can Morbidelli challenge for the title until the end of the season? Possibly, but it looks like he will need the M1 to work well more often than it doesn’t. 

Joan Mir’s results, on the other hand, could be alarming for the opposition. The Spaniard has retired twice, for his own fault in the Spanish Grand Prix and for the fault of Iker Lecuona in Brno. Aside from that, Mir has not finished outside the top five and it is possible to say that the #36 could have gone 2-1-3 since that Czech Grand Prix retirement had it not been for the red flag in the Austrian Grand Prix. Instead he finished fourth in Austria, but regardless the 2017 Moto3 World Champion’s form looks to be the most formidable of all the MotoGP riders at the moment and, in spite of his two non-scores, he is only 12 points behind Dovizioso. 

The truth is that right now no on else in MotoGP has the combination of speed and consistency of Joan Mir. Others are fast, like Quartararo and Vinales, but neither of them have had a top five since Jerez; and others are consistent, like Valentino Rossi who has had only one finish outside the top six since he rediscovered a positive feeling with the Yamaha in the Andalusian Grand Prix, that being the aforementioned ninth place in Styria. But Rossi has only one podium and has not looked like winning a race yet, whilst managing his pace when the grip drops continues to be a problem for the #46, albeit much less so than in the beginning of the season. 

The possible exception to the rule is Francesco Bagnaia, who was on for his first MotoGP podium in Andalusia before his Ducati expired, was fast in Brno before he broke his leg and was second in Misano. It would not be inconceivable that Bagnaia could have been on the podium twice in Austria, considering the speed of the Ducati in that track and Bagnaia’s speed in other places in 2020. But the reality is that Bagnaia has taken four ‘zeroes’ and is 47 points behind Dovizioso in the championship, 35 from Mir.

Furthermore, considering consistency, the Suzuki has been the most consistent motorcycle in 2020. The GSX-RR could have been a podium contender in Jerez were it not for Alex Rins’ injury and the crash of Joan Mir that ended his Spanish round and compromised his Andalusian Grand Prix. In Brno, Alex Rins was only tenths away from the podium only two weeks on from the shoulder injury that has compromised his season since round one and in Austria the Suzuki was able to take Joan Mir to his first MotoGP podium and could have taken him to his first win were it not for the aforementioned red flag. Finally, in Misano, both Rins and Mir were in the fight for the podium, the #36 getting the better of both his teammate and Valentino Rossi in the closing stages to take third place. 

In comparison, the Ducati struggled a lot in Brno, the Yamaha in Austria and the KTM in Misano. Neither Honda nor Aprilia have a horse in the title race this year, with the possible and unlikely exception of Takaaki Nakagami who does not yet have a podium in MotoGP but is nonetheless level on points with Brad Binder and only 23 points adrift in the points battle, so cannot fairly be ruled out.

The Suzuki’s strength seems to be drive grip and acceleration immediately out of the corner. It loses out compared to the Ducati or the KTM when the bike gets fully upright and all of the power is unleashed to the rear tyre, but in the initial acceleration phase the GSX-RR seems to be among the best. Furthermore, although it doesn’t have perhaps the same amount of grip as the Yamaha on maximum angle, it is faster than the YZR-M1, the only other inline-four on the MotoGP grid, which is why the Suzuki tends to be better in the race compared to qualifying and the Yamaha vice versa. Additionally, that inline-four configuration allows the Suzuki to be faster than its V4 rivals in the middle of the corner, whilst Dovizioso was one to praise its braking performance in Austria, when he fought with Rins briefly.

However, Suzuki’s qualifying struggles could hinder Mir in the title race. He was able to come through the field from eighth on the grid in Misano, as was Rins from seventh, but the incident with Lecuona in Brno highlights the issues that come with qualifying in the middle of the grid. 

So, can Mir take hold of the championship, keep his consistency up and create a gap between him and the rest of the field? Firstly, yes. There is every chance that Mir could win this weekend in the second Misano race, the Grand Prix of Emilia Romagna, and theoretically the Suzuki should be strong in most of the remaining circuits – Le Mans has been difficult in previous years and Portimao is unknown, but Suzukis were fourth and sixth in Barcelona last year and whilst Aragon was difficult for them in 2019, in 2018 they fought for the podium, whilst Rins was only one second away from the podium in Valencia in 2019. 

However, secondly, it is possible that other riders find some consistency, or more speed. Valentino Rossi, for example, could also win in Misano, or Morbidelli could go back-to-back, or Quartararo could return to his Jerez form. If 2020 has shown anything, it has shown that this year anything is possible, however if there was one rider who stood out from the rest right now, the argument is strong that that rider is Joan Mir.