Joan Mir suffered a weekend to forget at Misano, qualifying 18th before collecting a jump start penalty then crash in the opening three laps.

The Suzuki Ecstar rider endured an early end to the weekend that saw him lose his ‘reigning world champion’ monicker. Crashing out at turn two and collecting birthday boy Danilo Petrucci in the process. A disappointing finish after the Mallorcan had run strongly in the initial wet conditions.

“Honestly, it was a difficult weekend and when you start like this is difficult to make something. I made a jump start. I have doubts if I put the launch control so and when I tried to check, I moved a little bit and obviously that counts as a jump start so I had to take a penalty. Also to start in 18th position is difficult.

“I want to just apologise to the team, because on the race it was completely my mistakes. I didn’t know how to manage the situation. So I’m not happy. We have to look back on the weekend to understand why we were on the 18th position on the start. The reason, this is the first thing and also why, when we show great potential in wet, so yeah, quite frustrating.

“Important thing is that I want to congratulate Fabio. Of course I’m sad because I couldn’t make it this year but he completely deserved it and he was the best this season by far. Congratulations to him, to Yamaha and all the team.

“When I was overtaking Danilo, it was not a crazy manoeuvre at all, it was just a left hander,” he explained of his lap three exit. “With this temperature in the first lap, you have to be a bit careful on the left side and when I change the direction I just lost the front but looks that was a type of manoeuvre that I was not going to hit him or to make a crazy manoeuvre. So that’s why I think Danilo was not angry.

“I apologise to him, because this is the type of things that I don’t want to do. Also I have to say that starting in 18th position, MotoGP is another one, because all the riders closing lines, is crazy! Is what it is when you start 18. You have a lot of riders in front, a lot of confusion and that’s it. I’m happy that Danilo is fine, of course I didn’t do it on purpose and not the present that I wanted to give to him!

“Coming back with a bad result in Austin, not good feelings after the great middle of the season that we more or less were doing with what we had - I was quite happy. Then looks like in the last two races I was not able to ride in the way that I could.

“Here in Misano, honestly I’m really happy about the step that I did in wet conditions. I was always there on top in wet. I was always competitive but the problem in both sessions FP2 and FP3 was only when the track was getting dry, we had a lot of trouble - not only myself also Alex [Rins]. We were in trouble on that type of situation, so that’s a bit the problem and this is what we have to understand.

“We need to make the other step because now we don’t know in Portimao the weather, we don’t know in Valencia, maybe it’s worse. Always in wet this is what happens. Start the track wet but then is getting dry. So if we are fast in wet and it is getting dry, we need to be faster. This is the most important thing to understand for the next race for sure.”