Joan Mir heads into the second day of the Qatar Grand Prix weekend on the back foot after narrowly missing out on a top ten spot in yesterday’s FP2.
With FP3 conditions unlikely to provide better lap times due to the hotter and less grippier track surface, Mir is likely looking at a Q1 appearance.
One lap speed remains the achilles heel of the Suzuki bike, and Mir was unable to improve enough in the closing stages, with the session becoming a qualifying preview.
Mir said after the first day back that there is ‘margin to improve’, which was highlighted by team-mate Alex Rins who did manage to secure a top ten spot with fifth position.
For much of the day both Suzuki’s were running inside the top ten, but Mir was disappointed to have missed out by the slender margin of +0.013s.
“Well, it was a difficult day because we probably missed the last day of testing and today that is what happened,” added Mir.
“When you ride as strong in FP2, then the small details count a lot. At the moment we didn’t have that last day to work on the details.
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“I think that tomorrow we have a margin to improve. We know where we are losing time and that’s it. I hope tomorrow will be better.”
I did acknowledge that the improvements are unlikely to come in the all important third practice session though.
Mir said: “Well FP3 will be impossible to improve, so we will probably have to go through Q1 and that is it.
“This is what happened today, so the best we can do is work for tomorrow and forget about today.”