Persisting issues with vibration꧋ held back Joan Mir in qualify🔴ing at the Thai MotoGP, but the Spanish rider enjoyed a positive Sprint.

Mir was happy with his initial pace in the Sprint, whic🐷h he eventually finished in 13th plac🀅e, but encountered late tyre wear troubles despite choosing the more durable hard-compound rear tyre.

“In the race, the good rhythm that we had this mornin🎃g, I was able to do it,” Mir said.

“I was able to recover many positions; step-by-step I was in the high-1:30s in the first part of the race, and then for some reason the tyre dropped 💧so much.

“We were with the hard rear [tyre], because we wanted to test for tomorrow, and the drop was massive — the tyre dropped close to one second pe꧂r lap in the last laps.

“So, it was difficult to understand; we have to analyse everyඣthing, because hopefully we [had] it today and not tomorrow, and maybe that can change a bit our mentality in 🀅terms of tyre [choice] for tomorrow.

“But, it was a positive day for us: I’m happy.”

A rising theme in MotoGP is that the racing at the front becomes fairly tedious, with most of the rid🌃ers riding the same bike in largely the same way, and therefore unable to make much difference compared to their rivals in order to make a pass happen.

In comparison, further back in the pack there is more diversity in machinery, resulting in ෴more intense battles.

“The thing is that the camera only shows the top-five, but behind it wꦅas very fun,” M༒ir said.

“I was🃏 tucking the front, overtaking; all the riders that I was overtaking in the corners were overtaking me in the straight, and I passed them again on the corner.

“I had fun, [for the first time] since a long time. I started 19th and I was fighting for the top-𝐆10 — tha𒁏t is our goal, we can’t do much more.”

While Mir was able to enjoy the battles in the Sprint, he wasn’t able to extract th🔯e most from himself in qualifying due to continuing problems with vibrations.

“The qualifying complicates all our weekend,” Mir said. “We have aඣ lot of problems with vibrations, it’s very difficult to handle with a new tyre because, in that condition, the limit of the bike— you arrive very quickly to this.

“Then, it’s a constant vibration that the Japanese people — we all k𒀰now that problem — they are trying to understand because it’s difficult for them to understand from where [the vibration comes from], and how it’s possible that one rider has more, another less.

“This is so difficult for them to understand, it’s normal. We are a bit in that pr⭕ocess to solve it, but [wh💧ile] we don’t improve that, I will be not able to perform in qualifying — it’s every time the same.”

Mir felt he had improved his feeling with the bike on Saturday morning in Thailand, but was𒅌 ev🅷en unable to take advantage of those improvements in qualifying because of the vibration issue.

𓆏“This morning, we fixed the bike, I feel a lot better with tꦡhe front part of it,” Mir said.

“We don’t have good grip in acceleration, we lose compared꧋ to the others, this is something that we know. But, if you can stay behind and you can use more the front part of the bike, maybe you can follow.

“But, the thing is that, if you have the vibrationsꦅ, you cannot even use🍸 that front part of the bike. This is what is killing all the performance on the qualifying laps.”

Overall, Mir concluded that his Saturday in🅰 Thailand was “probably not the worst one. We had a lot of worse days than this one, so it’s a good feel🐻ing and a good boost for tomorrow.”

However, his focus remains on the vibration issue: “Let’s see iꦗf tomor♓row we can close this weekend and solve this thing of the vibration because it’s horrible.”