{"id":188973,"date":"2025-10-04T05:08:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T05:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/188973\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T05:08:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T05:08:06","slug":"joan-mir-mandalika-important-after-special-moment-in-motegi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/188973\/","title":{"rendered":"Joan Mir: Mandalika \u201cimportant\u201d after \u201cspecial moment\u201d in Motegi"},"content":{"rendered":"

After breaking a near four-year MotoGP podium drought with his first Honda rostrum last Sunday in Japan, Joan Mir<\/a> is eager to see the RCV\u2019s potential this weekend in Mandalika.<\/p>\n

While Mir has shown flashes of Honda form before – fifth in Indonesia 2023 and sixth at the Red Bull Ring this season – he wasn\u2019t able to keep the momentum going.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a special moment for us because step by step we are achieving a little bit our goals,\u201d said Mir, the 2020 world champion for Suzuki who joined Honda at the start of 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a very difficult and long journey without being successful. In the past races, from the middle of the season, I started to feel that I could have a bit the package to fight for good results, for results that are worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd for reasons that happened in the races, my mistakes, mistakes from the others, technical problems, we could not put a result together.<\/p>\n

Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

\u201cMotegi was the right moment to start doing that. So, I feel that from Motegi we show that we can put the results together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis track is completely different as Motegi. So it will be important for us to understand if we can be as competitive as there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not my favourite track, I would say, but I think we can have a chance. Now the bike looks competitive and I’m looking forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

2024 saw Honda\u2019s <\/a>results hit rock bottom in the MotoGP <\/a>era, with just two top ten finishes. But they have celebrated three podiums so far this season, including a wet-weather victory for Johann Zarco at Le Mans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot say one specific point, just the base of the bike is much better in terms of aerodynamic, chassis, engine – everything works together. Before something was missing there,\u201d Mir said.<\/p>\n

Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we understand a little bit more about the way that we have to go to make this package work. We changed swingarm, some configuration on the engine side, a couple of things that make this bike a lot more rideable.\u201d<\/p>\n

LCR’s Zarco remains Honda\u2019s top rider in the world championship, in tenth, with Mir\u2019s team-mate Luca Marini in twelfth place.<\/p>\n

Mir, who has finished less than half of the Sunday races this season – and suffered double DNF at Mandalika last year – has climbed to 15th in the standings.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After breaking a near four-year MotoGP podium drought with his first Honda rostrum last Sunday in Japan, Joan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,9400,9398,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-188973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-honda-hrc","11":"tag-joan-mir","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}