The Suzuki rider had been the fastest on the first day of the opening weekend of the season, and kept his FP2 time as the fastest until Q2, in which the twelve fastest drivers of the weekend went to look for the first pole position of the year.
However, the presence of the wind in Losail hurt the Suzukis who saw, once again, how the problems of last year’s Saturdays manifested themselves again.
In the end, Alex Rins will start from the fourth row of the grid, tenth, while Joan Mir, his teammate, will do so two positions further on.
“It was a Q2 with an unexpected result, tenth position, and Joan’s eighth place was not what we wanted, I thought we would do a first or second row,” the Barcelona native admitted annoyed.
“What happened last year happened to us, we can’t have good traction on lean coming out of the corner, the engineers are working on it,” he said.
Although Rins was expected to be fighting for pole position, the final result has some positive nuances.
“I finished tenth, but 0.4 from pole, which is nothing, a moto away, so in the end we have a little more speed on the straight, that will help us maintain the position and not lose it like before, now We have to analyze what could have happened and put ourselves in a career perspective”.
Rins, who was last year demanding the figure of a team manager to lean on, valued the first weekend with Livio Suppo.
“Happy with Livio, he has been telling us little things, little tips that the truth is that he missed them,” he acknowledged.
Both Rins and Mir made their two outings on track in Q2 alone, without looking for a wheel, but with other drivers behind who used them as a hare, a strategy that was perhaps wrong.
“It could be, I don’t know how the others have done the times, what is certain is that we have made the starts alone and pulling other riders, like Aleix Espargaró or Enea Bastianini, who are fifth and second, but I prefer to start alone, doing my job is not to go desperately behind anyone following a wheel, we make our way and let what has to come out”, he was critical of the wheel followers.
The Suzuki wanted to end his appearance with a more positive tone.
“We expected a much better result in Q2, but we are not that far away, I am not happy, but we are not a second and a half from the first, as before. We have a good pace, in FP4 I was not able to get it out because we were testing things on the bike, but we have pace and we just need to decide which tire we go out on the race with”, concluded Rins.
