Repsol Honda Team Pair Focus on Assessing New Parts in Austria
Red Bull Ring - SpielbergA day of experimentation and learning for Marc Marquez and Joan Mir as they worked through a busy schedule to assess upgrades from HRC.
Clear conditions at the Red Bull Ring led to a complete day of on track action for the Repsol Honda Team as the Austrian GP began in earnest. Both Marc Marquez and Joan Mir spent much of the day assessing an upgraded aerodynamics package for their Honda RC213V machines.
Friday’s morning session was about understanding the new aero updates for Marc Marquez, the #93 running them back-to-back with the previous version. Marquez suffered a fall during the first session at Turn 4 but was able to remount and finish the session. With a base of data gathered, the eight-time World Champion and his team worked on improving his overall feeling with the bike in the afternoon. An impressive run of laps saw the Repsol Honda Team rider briefly inside the top two, but traffic later in the session prevented him from improving further. As a result, Marquez finished the day in 13th with a best time of 1’29.356.
Joan Mir’s day would be somewhat more complicated than his teammate’s, the #36 struggling to set a fast lap at the end of afternoon practice as spits of rain began to fall at a critical moment in the session. His ideal times suggest a better pace, especially in the first half of the lap where the 2020 MotoGP World Champion is able to challenge the top ten. Mir ultimately finished the day in 23rd position but is well aware his potential is much higher, hungry for improvements.
Saturday’s forecast looks set to be dry for both Qualifying and the Sprint, the Red Bull Ring sure to produce some more of its typical dramatic action when the lights go out.
There was a lot of work to do today, it was very mentally demanding as we worked across two different aero packages. Your riding style needs to change quite a lot for the new aero. We will keep using it here because at this type of track it has some improvements that are clear, but we will need to keep trying it at other tracks. I pushed very hard at the end of the afternoon session and we improved our lap time, unfortunately we lost our last fast lap – but this can happen. The target is understanding the aero package and seeing what’s possible tomorrow.
Today we were able to try the new fairing that Taka first tried last race. So this meant that we had to change the setup for it, this took a bit of time. Then in the afternoon session there was some rain that came which interrupted our plan and progress a little. I was going well on my final lap, but there was some rain in the last sector. For sure I know this is not our real potential, which is in the top 15, so hopefully we can make a step tomorrow to finish where we know we can be.
