Why champ Joan Mir uses the leg dangle and other MotoGP riding secrets

If you push the front tyre too much you go wide, you miss the apex and you cannot accelerate as early as you need to. The target is always the same: to stop the bike in less metres, turn the bike and then accelerate in the correct way.

Do you use a lot of engine-brake or do like the bike to be freer?

How much engine-brake you use depends on how you use the rear brake. Some riders use more engine-brake and then use less rear brake to compensate. I’m quite balanced – I don’t use a lot or a little engine-brake, then I use the rear brake to adjust as I want, depending on grip, the type of corner and so on.

You have MotoGP’s biggest knee rests fitted to your bike – are they only for braking or do you also use them to help turn the bike with your legs?

I just use them for braking. Usually all the power you use in braking comes from your arms, so if you can help with your knees then you use less upper-body power during braking, which gives more stability and also saves upper-body energy.

Why do you use the leg dangle on the brakes?

Often now I do this unconsciously. I think I use it to stabilise myself and the bike and also to make myself a bit lower, to stop too much weight transfer on the brakes.

KTM rider Brad Binder says that taking his foot off the footpeg also helps him put more weight into the handlebar to help him counter-steer into the corner. Do you do that?

No, Brad’s style is a bit strange! I do see him doing that!

The most important thing is getting the bike turned, so you’re trying to get the bike down to the correct speed, so it’ll turn. The Suzuki obviously turns very well and if I think of some particular corners, like Turn 1 at Red Bull Ring, it looks like you’re on the brakes going straight, then you’ve turned the bike to the right in, like 0.001 seconds. How is this possible?

That corner fits my style and our bike quite well. I like to brake really hard, put the bike on angle and open early. So in that corner when we release the brake and go into the turn I think the others are still braking to make the bike turn. This is why, even in previous years without the ride-height device and good horsepower, we usually had some of the best times in sector one at Red Bull Ring.

We usually see you laying rubber when you exit that corner, but it doesn’t look like wheelspin…

Because if you stop in less metres you can open the gas earlier, still with a lot of lean angle.

Are you at 100% throttle there while the torque map controls everything?

No, but you turn the last part with a bit of throttle, when the bike is more upright.

Which brings us to your exit corner technique…

OK, you are off the front and rear brakes, so you open the gas and pick up the bike as soon as possible to avoid wheelspin and get good acceleration.

How do you pick up the bike?

With my arms and a bit with my body and a little bit with weight on the outside footpeg.

If you are in the corner with this technique, then you have margin to open and make like this. [Mir doesn’t hang off the bike as far as some riders, so he mimes having his chest close to the fuel tank, then pushes the bike up and away from him, to lift the bike onto the fatter part of the rear tyre, so he has grip to accelerate]. If you are completely outside the bike in the corner, like this, then you don’t have margin to lift the bike. [He mimes hanging way off the bike, so his arms are already stretched, so he can’t use them to lift up the bike.]

At what point do you engage the ride-height device?

As soon as you can – everyone uses the device really early to avoid the initial wheelie out of the corner, that’s the important thing.

So you engage it from 100% throttle?

No, before, when you are still in the corner, because the rear has to come down. The bikes that have automatic devices do it when the front fork extends, so really early. Our device is manual.

What’s it like when you’re fighting with the V4s? The battle between the inline-fours [the Suzuki and Yamaha] and the V4s [the Aprilia, Ducati, Honda and KTM] is one of the big stories in MotoGP.

The V4s can stop in less metres and they accelerate more, while we have more speed in the corners. When you are behind them you see that you brake in the same place as they do and you stop a bit less and go a bit wider, then they stop and you cannot carry your speed through the corner. Then you open the throttle in the same place as they do, you open full and then they go. It’s difficult to manage!

The Suzuki has less downforce aero than the other bikes, is there any advantage to this?

I think this is a combination. If you have more wings you will have less top speed [because more downforce aero creates more drag], so if we have less wings we have more top speed but more wheelie and we create less downforce, so it’s a disadvantage in some places. For example, this year Yamaha use bigger wings, which make their top speed worse but in the corners and exiting the corners they have more downforce than us.

The Suzuki definitely looks like the most old-school MotoGP bike!

Exactly, it’s more simple.

What about keeping your front tyre cool – do you have to think a lot about that?

We have to think about it at some tracks. You have a tyre that’s really grippy and you have the bike really on-point, then when the temperature comes up they become completely the opposite – the front does what it wants and the bike becomes so difficult to ride, so, yes, we so have to think about it.

What do you do to avoid the temperature and pressure coming up?

I can’t even be close to the guy in front. For example, at Jerez, Jack [Miller], Marc [Márquez] and Aleix [Espargaró] were completely together almost the whole race, while I was one second behind them. If I got closer to them, half a second, then the front tyre was locking and I started going wide [because the heat from the bikes in front overheated his front tyre]. It’s a problem.

If you watched the Jerez race [May’s Spanish GP] you may have noticed that all the bikes in front of us weren’t using black front wheel rims. Pecco [Bagnaia, the race winner] used silver rims [with special heat treatment], the same for Fabio [Quartararo, who finished second], Jack and Aleix, while Marc had orange rims, so this can help.

Your rookie MotoGP season was 2019, then the rear tyre changed for 2020, giving more entry and exit grip, so how did that change things for you?

When you have less grip in the middle of the corner you have to change a lot of things. Some bikes work better with more grip, others work better with less grip, this is the story of the different manufacturers and riders. In our case our bike reacts better and works in a better way when there’s more grip and the track is cooler.

But not too cool! Because then we have the problems at places like Le Mans [where conditions were cold and damp in 2019, 2020 and 2021], when we couldn’t warm up the front tyre and I was crashing in every corner, almost! Now with the ride-height device the situation has changed. You warm up the front tyre more because of the extra speed at the end of the straight, more weight transfer on the brakes and more overall weight. A couple of degrees more temperature makes a big difference.

You said earlier that you use a lot of rear grip to brake deep into the corner, thanks to the latest rear slick, so what was it like when everyone hard to go back to the stiffer rear slick during the Indonesian GP at Mandalika?

Woah! It was a big difference because we had evolved and improved the bike for the new tyre and when you go back to the older tyre everything changes completely. Woah! In Mandalika my biggest problem was corner entry, not the exit.

Yes, and it was the same with Marc [who had a huge corner-entry crash during morning warm-up].

Exactly, you can control the exit slide, but when the rear makes like this – waak! – in the corner entry and you lose the rear, what can you do?

This may be a leading question, because we have heard rumours about you going to Honda in 2023, but when you look at V4 MotoGP bikes do they look demanding to ride and do you think you could ride one?

I’ve never tried a V4, so I honestly don’t know if a V4 will fit my style well. But I’m quite aggressive on the bike – I like to brake hard, stop the bike and then be smooth on the exit. For sure, nowadays every bike you ride will take you a few months to understand everything, because the level of the technology is so high now that you always need time.

Are you good at adjusting your riding technique to fit different bikes?

Yes, because when I came to MotoGP in 2019 my style was completely different to the style I have now, completely different.

Also, you didn’t take long to be competitive in Moto2, when other Moto3 champions take longer…

Exactly, I got a podium in my fifth race in Moto2, but the first year is always tough.