It only took two and a half seasons of Grand Prix racing for Spanish talent Joan Mir to move from Moto3 to MotoGP. Suzuki announced today that the current Marc VDS rider in Moto2 will join the factory Suzuki team from next season.
Crowned Moto3 World Champion in 2017, Mir was followed by many MotoGP teams, but it was Suzuki who eventually signed one of Moto2’s most promising riders.
Even though Joan Mir is still a Moto2 rookie, he already impressed this debut season, climbing to the podium in the last two races. And the best part is that he has now beaten his current teammate Alex Marquez by going to MotoGP first, while Marc Marquez’s younger brother still hasn’t made that move even though he’s in the pipeline to do so.
Suzuki will again take the risk of signing a young talent, which they did with Maverick Viñales a few years ago and more recently with Alex Rins. By betting on young talent, Suzuki tried to beat other teams by signing them, but Suzuki failed to keep Viñales for too long. Yamaha’s factory team sang the Spanish rider to ride alongside Valentino Rossi when Jorge Lorenzo went to Ducati.
This time around, if Joan Mir turned out to be as talented a driver as Maverick Viñales did back then, the team led by Davide Brivio protected themselves, and sources say the Hamamatsu factory made sure that some options were included in the contract, just in case I got the attention of other factory teams.