Joan Mir: “I prefer testing engines than to have this one in the next race!”

Joan Mir was pleasantly surprised by his British MotoGP race performance - until it came to a premature end with an engine issue at the midway mark.

With the next Honda engine step not ready until Austria, in two weeks, Mir knew he had to try and make the best of the present package.

That includes the revised engine introduced in Barcelona, which Mir feels offers less outright performance than the standard version.

But in a case of ‘one step back to take two steps forward in future’ Mir - after switching to the standard engines for Mugello - has joined team-mate Luca Marini in running the less powerful (revised) engine for the past three rounds.

LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami was the only Honda rider to open new engines at Silverstone, which appeared similar to the current Repsol spec. His team-mate Zarco remained on the previous version.

All four Honda riders are rumoured to be receiving ‘new configuration’ engines in Austria, based on the direction of the 'Barcelona' engine spec.

Meanwhile, after losing out to Marini by 0.6s over 15th place in the Saturday Sprint, Mir credited set-up changes for making him more comfortable in the Grand Prix.

The 2020 world champion was holding 14th place, between Marini and Pramac Ducati's Franco Morbidelli - recovering from two long laps - when his bike shut down.

“A technical problem,” said Mir, who was wearing a Randy Mamola replica helmet alongside Honda's retro 75th motorcycle grand prix anniversary livery.

“Lights on the dashboard and I lost power on the straight. So electric probably because we didn't have any oil on the bike.

“But honestly, I had the best feeling with the bike all weekend.

“I was able to be quite competitive. Get back good feelings. I was behind Luca. I was controlling the tyre management, which is important here, because I knew that Morbidelli was behind.

“When Morbidelli was going to overtake me and Luca, I was [going to] overtake Luca and try to break away. But the lap that Morbidelli overtook, I had this problem.”

Honda, like Yamaha, can modify its engine design during the season due to concessions.

“Personally, like I’ve said, with this [current] engine configuration, you lose performance," Mir said.

"And we see that Taka also struggled a lot this weekend [with this engine], complaining about the things that I complain [about] with this engine character.

“With the [standard 2024] engine, that for example Johann is using, that was for me the strongest package actually this year.

“But then we got a bit lost [with the set-up] because trying different [engine] configurations you think that you can improve here or there.

“At the end, you can make better races when you probably don't touch a lot of things on the bike.

“We tried to modify 100 times, the geometry or whatever, and it's not giving us this extra grip or acceleration that we are missing.

“So it's better to try and feel quite comfortable with the front, and try to have a good pace.

“We came a bit back to the setup that I had at the beginning of the year and I was able to attack more the front and in the race, I was happy with my feelings.

“So probably from now on, that will be my base and I will not touch anything.

“I don't expect that I will have to change so much for the other engine [due to arrive in Austria].“

Asked if he likes being able to test different engines during the season, Mir smiled:

“No, it's not nice but also in our situation, it's good... I prefer to be testing engines than to have this one in the next race!”

Zarco remains the top Honda rider, in 18th place in the world championship, directly followed by Mir and Nakagami. 

Marini is 23rd, with one point, after losing 15th place at Silverstone due to a post-race low tyre pressure penalty.