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COME ON!
Joan Mir IS the 2020 MotoGP World Champion, the Suzuki rider has run steady, or perhaps nervous, to seventh place in the Valencia MotoGP, giving him the velvet cushion he needed to celebrate an unlikely title win at home with a round to spare.
It’s a day you won’t forget and we’re not sure we’ll make it into a season that took the old form, tucked it under a tire, and completely wrecked it with wear and tear.
There was also a race, of course, and it was a last-lap thriller that almost stole the show, so let us pick our big winners, some more than others, of course, and our Valencia MotoGP losers.
MotoGP Valencia 2020 winners and losers
Winners
Joan Mir
So there we have it, Joan Mir and Suzuki are their 2020 MotoGP World Champions … words we have to admit that we didn’t expect to say a few months ago when the season started in Jerez.
In fact, with more twists and turns than a lap of Cadwell Park, you couldn’t have called this as recently as two rounds ago, but while it takes years to pull off a title win, it also takes a few moments to lose.
In fact, almost anyone else on the grid would agree with that because in a year where the difference between good days and bad days laid the foundation for this trail, while Mir didn’t have the best day too often. with a single victory. to his name, he rarely left a clue unhappy with his performance.
And that was the key, Mir’s metronomic consistency (seven podiums in 13 races so far) doing the job to a great extent. Yes, there will be those who will aim for the compact 14-round season and yes, there will be those who will miss the absence of Marc Márquez, but Mir’s season shows the importance of being solid as well as being fast. Ask Fabio Quartararo …
Much ink and words have already been spilled about Mir’s unconventional path to the title, so we’ll conclude here by saying ‘many congratulations to Joan Mir and Suzuki’!
Suzuki
If anything, this title is just as much, if not more, a credit to Suzuki, who have meticulously thought their way to title glory. This is a team that had a plan and firmly stuck to it.
Returning to the series in 2015, Suzuki operates on a smaller budget than, say, Honda or Ducati, while unique, some would say it is wrong, focusing its resources on a single factory team. But while that means less data, with a laser-like focus on what you have, you’ve created a tight and efficient setup.
In fact, this title hasn’t been achieved in 2020 alone … this is years in the making, so thank Alex Rins, Maverick Vinales, and Andrea Iannone for doing their part as well.
The Suzuki GSX-RR has always been fast, to be sure, although it lacks some of that final finesse that is worth, say, around two or three tenths a lap. As such, although Suzuki looked fast in preseason testing, no one was ready to call him a contender.
However, it would turn out that the 2020 GSX-RR had retained the strengths of its predecessors, namely its sweet handling, the ability to conserve tires and just never break, but a more powerful engine, coupled with an increasingly confident rider. , you have removed that margin for the top ..
That said, while tire preservation was a key component of this title charge, it came at a cost, as Mir often had to make up ground in races because the smooth Suzuki can’t get the tires to work in a race. single lap in qualifying.
So here’s a rather curious tidbit for you … Joan Mir has won the 2020 world title with an average starting position of ninth (well, 8.7)!
Something that Suzuki must work on for sure, but that doesn’t matter today. Sixty years ago, Suzuki made its debut in the GP race … The anniversary tributes are no more moving than this.
Franco Morbidelli
After around 18 months in the shadow of Fabio Quartararo, this is Franco Morbidelli’s moment to shine.
Of course, Morbidelli is getting used to the top spot, this being his third win, which alone puts him right up there with Quartararo with the most wins in 2020.
However, on a day when the Frenchman’s increasingly slim title hopes disappeared in a black hole of gravel stones, Morbidelli appears to be getting better and better.
While his victories at Misano and Aragon were largely dominant, Morbidelli proved his mettle in racing not just to resist Miller, but to fight at the decisive moment, something we perhaps didn’t know he would be capable of before today.
It also lifts him past Quartararo in the overall standings to place him in a provisional second place in the standings.
Quartararo might have ruined it in 2019, but while Morbidelli’s track record has been flatter, thanks to his second-half season form, he could go further than his waiting superstar teammate …
Jack Miller
If there was one way for Jack Miller to describe his 2020 MotoGP season it would be… excusing the typical stereotype… ‘fun!’
Ups and downs, missed opportunities, opportunities seized, there was a point on the last lap where it seemed like Miller’s walk in 2020 would finally reap rewards. If it wasn’t for that pesky Morbidelli …
Regardless, this was a result that Miller needed to remind everyone of his credentials before his big move to the big factory in 2021, although it’s worth noting that this was perhaps his most comprehensive MotoGP weekend yet – fast in the races. practice, front row, saving the tire. and launch a final return attack.
If he hadn’t raced open at Turn 1 at the start, he might have taken the spoils … but otherwise, the Ducati bosses will sleep a little easier tonight.
The losers
Yamaha
There is an argument to suggest that Yamaha lost the 2020 MotoGP title as much as Suzuki won it, but we won’t get stuck on the semantics.
Suffice to say, the Valencia MotoGP couldn’t have typified Yamaha’s 2020 season more succinctly …
On the day Joan Mir closed the title, Fabio Quartararo’s dreams officially ended on lap nine with an accident. It was the regrettable, but perhaps not entirely unexpected, conclusion of a truly steamy weekend.
Quartararo was way off the beat, even on a single lap where the Yamaha can be fast without a good set-up. After running wide on the first lap, Quartararo made considerable progress to get the order back up before losing it entirely with a clunky crash.
The result comes in the context of some internal discontent among riders and engineers over the steering, or lack thereof, with the Yamaha M1. Having started the year looking arguably the strongest overall, the 2020 M1 would turn out to be a flawed package, with indifferent reliability finally landing in hot water with the regulators, while that dominating single-lap pace betrayed the fact that it was still vulnerable. running in terms of top speed.
Then came the tire problems, which negated Yamaha’s main strength in handling. Let’s just say Maverick Vinales may feel a little more vindicated after having pushed back persistent criticism of his backward route in many races.
As if to add salt to wounds, on a weekend in which Quartararo and Viñales complained that the 2019-spec Yamaha was ultimately better than their current team, Franco Morbidelli wins on that same bike from pole position to move up to second in the rankings.
So Yamaha will celebrate today, but it’s a bittersweet hangover for Monday …
Fabio Quartararo
In many ways, Fabio can feel like a great weight has been lifted from some rather bruised shoulders after an accident that caused his Yamaha to collapse in the same way as his title challenge.
To his credit, Quartararo, heading into the 2020 season with great anticipation, didn’t exactly disappoint this year, but it has been a pretty sobering two-halves season.
While Mir was the angelic example of coherence, Quartararo was the diabolical antithesis. Three wins, yes, but after that his best results are a fourth, a seventh and two eighths. If Mir had had an unconventional route to the title, this would have been even more.
Evidently inexperience has played its part, Quartararo was sucked into a downward spiral that wasn’t always caused by himself alone, the Frenchman was hampered by Yamaha setup headaches without perhaps having the above examples to draw on. to contribute to a change.
That said, Joan Mir’s title win comes in his second MotoGP season as well, but while this result will hurt a bit for a rider who scored 50 of his 125 points in the first two rounds, there could be a glimmer of light here. … if you squint hard enough.
Indeed, this could ultimately be the true measure of his credentials as a burgeoning MotoGP legend … if he can renew himself and fight in Yamaha blue again next season, he will look back on 2020 as a necessary evil in the road to glory.
