Joan Mir: No team orders while Rins has title chance

MotoGP world championship leader Joan Mir doesn’t expect Suzuki to discuss team orders until Alex Rins is mathematically out of the title chase.

Rins gave Suzuki its first victory of the season at last Sunday's Aragon round, but is only seventh in the standings and 36 points behind Mir.

"Alex still has the chance to get the title," said Mir, who finished third. "When he will not have the chance to get the title then I think [team orders] can be a good thing to talk about.

"But at the moment it makes no sense to talk about that, because Alex is also doing a great job and it's not fair to say to him team orders if he still has the chance.

"So probably we have to continue like this and when he will not have possibilities I think Davide will speak with both riders. I think it will be like this, but I don't know."

Mir leads a title top four covered by just 15 points, with four races and a maximum of 100 point still up for grabs, starting at the second Aragon round this weekend.

"I'm the same as before, the only thing is that in the official press conference I sit in the middle," Mir said of taking over the title lead from Fabio Quartararo last Sunday.

"I will not change the way to approach the races. It would be a big mistake if I changed something now."

And his toughest rival?

"All of them. I don't want to say one, because if one of us makes a super great weekend he can make the difference to be the winner."

Rins wasn't the only rider currently out of title contention to finish ahead of Mir last weekend, with rookie Alex Marquez finishing a surprise second.

"In the past we saw the Honda riding in an aggressive way, like braking super hard, picking up, turning the bike like an animal and opening the throttle like Marc," Mir said.

"I didn't see this [from Alex]. I saw really clear lines. I saw like a four-cylinder [inline] bike. So it was quite impressive to see that. I didn't expect it and that's why I said that [I'm worried about Honda]. But I think we also have a really good bike."

"In the last laps I was struggling a lot with the left part of the tyre and we saw Marquez was able to overtake me easier in the last corner," Mir added. "We could see that he had something and he took the right decision to use the medium front tyre.

"We can see clearly that the left corners were where I was losing half-a-second per lap in the last laps. Problems I didn't have all weekend. So let's try to improve because it was why I couldn’t get the victory."

Mir is six points clear of Quartararo (Yamaha), 12 ahead of Maverick Vinales (Yamaha) and 15 in front of Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati).