Joan Mir (Suzuki) clinched the 2020 MotoGP championship earlier today in Valencia with one round to spare – next weekend at Portimão. He needed to leave the race with at least a 26 point advantage over 2nd place, and his calculated ride to 7th place at the finish leaves him 29 points clear of today’s race winner, Franco Morbidelli (Yamaha).
Morbidelli took the early lead, but was chased by Jack Miller (Ducati), who caught and passed Morbidelli with two laps remaining, and the two of them traded the lead until Morbidelli prevailed at the flag. Finishing third behind Miller was Pol Espargaro (KTM). Morbidelli’s win was his third this year.
Mir took the championship in only his 2nd year in the MotoGP category, and he lifted a 20-year drought for Suzuki since Kenny Roberts, Jr. won the Premier class championship. Mir’s Team ECSTAR Suzuki also clinched the Team championship today. You can find full race results here. For additional details, visit the official MotoGP site.
Amazing what a year without MM is like.
Congats to Mir & Suzuki! Jack & Franco put on a great display at then end of the race.
Congratulations to Mir. The guy has shown some great form this year. He earned the title. I have to say I’m elated to see him and Suzuki take the championship. I love an underdog. Now on to Portugal to fight for the triple crown!
As for the race, great last lap by Jack and Franco. Hard but clean. I hope Miller gets the extra step he needs at Factory Ducati next year to put himself in the title fight.
Nakagami… Poor guy just can’t tame his nerves. Saw some of that from him in Moto2 as well. Hopefully he’ll learn to ride smarter.
What a weird, interesting, and fantastic season of racing it has been. Looking forward to the last race (also Moto2 and Moto3 championships going to the last race.) Looking forward to next season. Especially interested to see how MotoAmerica multitime championship winner Cameron Beaubier will do in Moto2. I’d like to see a US rider claw their way into the premier class sometime in the next few years.
First, congratulations to Mir and Suzuki, great year for them. Second, now that Suzuki is winning, wonder if they will have a satellite team soon? I think if they did, Petronas might jump ship over to them.
That’s a good question. But I think the answer for the immediate future has already been decided a few years back in that there is no more room on the grid for another GP team.
Another answer might be that is Suzuki ready to start spreading themselves thinner?
I’m also inclined to think that Suzuki needs to sell a lot more product before spending more on the racing program.
Suzuki sells vastly more product than does Ducati and yet I count 6 Ducs on the grid. Ducati sells 50ish thousand units a year as I understand it while Suzuki cracks out over 1.5 million.
If Suzuki makes race bikes available to other teams it will happen sooner or later.
Not to mention Ducati’s heavy involvement in WSBK, where Suzuki is absent. Surely they could bring a satellite team to the grid.
If someone told you last year that three of the first six bikes to finish a race would be KTM, would you have believed them?
How about six in the top ten being from Europe?
I’ll naturally root for KTM because the are the only brand there that is actively developing two strokes, which is all that I will buy when I am looking for a bike to compete on.
Yamaha have a bike that works 50% of the time, and it’s possibly related to the temperature. The 2020 bike was untouchable at the start of the year, but as track temperatures decreased, the 2019 bike came to the fore. It seems crazy, but the margins of tenths of a second are amplified in such a competitive class (all classes are wire-tight, which is a credit to the regulations).
So while we have to contemplate that a factory which has won more than 50% of the races is having a crisis of sorts, we can also see Honda and Ducati in big trouble.
It’s arguable that the KTM is the best bike on the grid. (Pol has been very strong and consistent, with yet another podium yesterday). If we see where all their rookies finished yesterday, it’s making the larger factories look weak.
Suzuki seem to have the best rider pairing as well, and where there was discussion that an inline 4 wouldn’t be able to win against a V4, Suzuki have really shone.
The Marquez question doesn’t diminish the achievements of Mir and Suzuki. We can still appreciate that Marc Marquez is the greatest rider of his generation and if he can get back to the top step promptly, it’s going to add greatly to his legacy. We know that it isn’t the bike, that’s for sure.
It’s quite remarkable. Last year the consensus was that a v-engine bike was an advantage. This year only 4 races have been won on v4’s, the other 9 on inlines, so far.
That was one of the most enjoyable races of the season, on several levels. I was really pulling for Takaaki Nakagami to grab P3 and finally get his first podium, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Watching the championship points spread between the top riders changing in real time was more interesting than usual, since the ability to clinch was real this time. Fabulous last lap battle between Miller and Morbidelli, edge-of-the-seat stuff. Good for Mir and Suzuki, very well deserved.
On a side note, I’m very impressed with commentator Ben Bostrom. He offers great insight, is quite articulate, and seems like a genuinely nice guy. Hope he’s back doing the same thing in 2021.
Great season. Mir showed the consistency necessary to win a championship. Yamaha’s troubles were almost hard to believe but they went from unable to win at the beginning of 2019 to the winningest mark this year, despite their troubles. Telling that Franco is the only one on last year’s bike. Great to see the KTM make the level too. I never doubted they’d get there. They’ve been successful everywhere else they’ve applied themselves.
While I know most fans are thinking “wait til Marc Marquez returns”, it’s worth noting that the field was fast and Honda was by and large off the pace. Marquez is special but he’s also dealing with a special injury and it’s possible that he will never return, let alone to the same level he was before. Hopefully he can make a full recovery. It would be fun to watch him compete in this new field.
It is interesting that Franco is on the 2019. I wonder if it the bike or if he has just been working diligently with a known package, and we are beginning to see the world class race that dominated do often in Moto2 come into his own. Both Maverick and Fabio said they’d like to be able to race the 2019 bike. Franco probably felt a little snubbed in the beginning that he didn’t get 2020 machine. Now I bet he can’t help but smile a little bit.
It really is interesting, isn’t it? The past few years it seems like the “new” bike has struggled against the old bike for Honda and Yamaha. The others have progressed more steadily, it seems.
Honestly, with respect to the Honda, I don’t see it as a struggle with the new bike. I think Honda probably built the fastest bike out there. It just happens that an elite bike is similar to an elite anything. There is a potential so rare that it takes something special to truly tap into it. I do not believe it is Honda’s approach to build a bike that any racer can climb on and have the potential to win the championship. It’s a severe bike built for champions to ride and dominate with. It’s the race bike version of the sword in the stone.
Congrat to WC Mir and Suzuki
If Rins can beat Morbidelli by 5 pts in next race it will be Suzuki 1-2 for the season. Unbelievable and they will win all 3 championships. Crazy.
Great race by Morbidelli and Miller, especially that last lap.
Pol on the podium again (thanks to an over enthusiastic Nakagami)
Other than Frankie, team Yamaha is having a dumper of a season