Mir and Rins latest riders to suffer burns in brutal Thai MotoGP

Joan Mir said he was ‘burning himself’ in the brutal heat of Buriram after crashing out of the top 10 in the MotoGP Thai Grand Prix on Sunday.

Mir’s factory Yamaha counterpart Alex Rins was also affected by an overheating bike in Thailand, revealing a burned patch on his inner thigh during the post-race interviews.

Having qualified 11th for the season opener, Mir steadily climbed up the order in the first half of the race, consolidating seventh place behind the Pramac Yamaha of Jack Miller.

But on lap 15 of 26, the Spaniard tucked the front of his RC213V at the tricky final corner, becoming the first rider to retire from the race.

While it initially appeared that the incident was entirely down to rider error, Mir later revealed that his bike was overheating so much that it became hard for him to stay upright.

“We were having some problems with the heat of the bike,” the 2020 champion explained. “It’s something that we will continue working on, but the truth is that we made some modifications and it was worse than yesterday.

“We tried to make something at the last moment yesterday to try to improve it and honestly I was burning myself. [It was] a big challenge to stay on the bike. I think it was the worst I had on a motorbike. I was never burning like this.

“And honestly, this thing was not helping with the crash. I made a mistake and getting burned was not helping not to make any mistakes.”

Ambient temperature remained over 30C at the Chang International Circuit this weekend, while track temperature exceeded 50C.

The extremely hot conditions in Thailand have been causing havoc for a number of riders, with VR46 Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio revealing that he had to voluntarily retire from Saturday’s sprint after suffering burns to his hands, legs and neck.

While Mir’s Honda wasn’t affected as badly, he still suffered some blisters on his body due to the heat coming out from his bike.

He said: “It was the legs [that were worst affected]. I have some blisters.

“I don’t know [what] the temperature [was] but it is very, very hot. It’s burning. Also, in the right [hand] corners, especially the slow corners, I was burning myself.

“I crashed in the corner that I was burning myself.”