Honda rider Joan Mir identified one key area the Japanese marque needs to improve to enhance its competitiveness in MotoGP.
The 2020 champion had a mixed weekend at the Circuit of the Americas, where he earned his best qualifying result since 2023 before crashing out in both the Sprint and Grand Prix races.
Despite finishing the round empty-handed, Mir acknowledged that Hondas lack of straight-line speed hampered any chance of fighting for the high-echelon positions on the grid.
“If we improve – it’s not a little bit, we have to improve a lot – the engine, we will be very close to the top three,” he explained to Crash.net.
“It’s not the only thing [we need] but it’s the biggest issue, especially during the race.
“Because the grip more or less you can handle, you can push a bit more at the beginning. Then you run out of tyre, but you can play a bit.
“But with the engine, every lap you go onto the straight, if you have someone behind, he will overtake you!”
The Spaniard revealed that HRC’s new technical director Romano Albesiano informed him that the marque is actively working on this problem.
“He told me, ‘You are fast’, that they know what the problem is and they are working hard. He said, ‘You have to try stay calm’!”
Joan Mir: ‘I don’t feel that I have the tools to fight’
Mir further explained that he had to recover a half-second advantage over the rest of the lap to avoid fellow countryman Pedro Acosta overtaking him.
“We can take the positives and say we are fast and we made the same lap time as Pecco [Bagnaia], but I don’t feel that I have the tools to fight,” Mir said after the Sprint. “We are amongst the last ones in terms of top speed.
“The crash was my mistake, but you have to risk a bit more than the others. You have to use a bit more front brake, to recover the distance you are losing in top speed.
“The balance with the bike is very good, I’m enjoying riding this bike. But on other hand it’s frustrating.
“It’s frustrating because with Pedro I had to be half a second per lap faster than the rider behind to avoid being overtaken. Like this it’s difficult.”
The 27-year-old admitted that pushing the front tyre under braking resulted in increased front pressure and loss of grip, noting that this wasn’t the first time such issues had occurred.
“Something similar happened in Argentina. The front pressure goes up because I have to risk more with the front,” he said. “So this scenario – we had it before and we will have it again in the future if we don’t improve.”
