On paper, Friday at MotorLand Aragón looked disastrous for Suzuki Ecstar’s Joan Mir, but in reality the MotoGP champion is far from concerned.

After opting to run used tyres throughout the afternoon instead of joining the pack in eh end of session time attack, the Spaniard is confident he has sufficient information to make the needed steps on Saturday in preparation for Sunday’s 23-lap race.

“Here there’s a huge difference between putting on a new tyre or a used one,” Mir explained on Friday afternoon. "I decided to do FP2 with the race tyre and not the soft one, because I wanted to understand the true feeling with the bike and to get prepared for the race.

“This afternoon it looks like I’m really far from the top, but in reality I’m not worried because I wasn’t pushing for a fast lap. Tomorrow the times will come down further and everything will get faster, so it will be interesting to see what we can do. I will be trying the soft tyres for sure, but of course you can’t just put that tyre on and go fast, it’s more important to work on the overall set-up.

“Today, mainly we focus on the work for the race,” he continued. “In FP1 I decided to use a soft tyre, then my lap time got cancelled and I couldn't make a great time attack. Then in the afternoon, the conditions were a bit better to try to make a better lap time and everything but my feelings were not the best ones.

“I felt really, really bad on the first lap, on the first exit, then we decide to work for the race, and to try to make a good setup for tomorrow and I think that was honestly the correct choice.

“I didn't feel good with a hard rear. I was too slow. The tyre was not working, and probably for our bike, for our setting, we need a different temperature to make the tyre work. We wanted to put the medium, that was the one that mainly all the riders were using, or probably 60%, and then my lap time were more consistent and more normal.

“Then we work a little bit more to stop the bike, because I'm not feeling really good in that area. I'm not feeling that 100% at the moment with it, so for sure we have margin, the bike in some moment is a bit nervous, so we have to calm it a bit down and to put everything together for tomorrow.”