Determined Mir Fights Through Early Damage to Secure Points in Portugal
Autódromo Internacional do AlgarveJoan Mir showed his grit as he matched the pace of the top ten to recover from early contact and secure more points aboard the Honda RC213V as Luca Marini continued to hunt improvements.
Round two of the 2024 MotoGP World Championship came to a dramatic conclusion at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve for the Repsol Honda Team. Recovering from a tough Qualifying, Joan Mir found himself in the mix of the second group and suffered contact and damage on the first lap after a strong opening to the race. The #36 gritted his teeth and steadily made his way through the field and into the points as he mirrored the pace of the top ten. Ultimately crossing the line in 12th, Mir leaves Portugal with clear areas to improve in mind but satisfied with how he and the team overcame the troubles of Friday.
Luca Marini made a lightning start to the 25-lap Portuguese Grand Prix aboard the Repsol Honda Team machine and immediately found himself in the mix with his fellow Honda riders. Working on his own pace and continuing to deepen his understanding of the Honda, the #10 completed another 25 laps in race trim on the Honda RC213V machine. 17th as the checkered flag came out, the Italian was pleased with what he and the team achieved from Friday morning to Sunday evening.
The MotoGP World Championship will resume in Austin, Texas at the Circuit of the Americas, April 12 – 14. Alex Rins took Honda’s lone victory of the 2023 season there and the unique Texan track saw Luca Marini take his debut MotoGP podium in the same weekend.
I am happy with how we performed today, if you look just at the final results page it maybe wouldn't seem like it. On the first lap we had a huge contact with Morbidelli, my leathers on the right side were almost fully black and the bike suffered a lot of damage and I was sent wide. It was quite hard to manage with all the damage, but even like this we were able to match the pace of the guys battling for the top ten. The key point we need to work on is improving our Qualifying so we can avoid these type of incidents. Everyone in the team and HRC have done a great job to improve from where we were on Friday so I want to say thank you to them.
We had a better race today than in Qatar and also compared to yesterday, I am happy with the changes we have made to the bike. I was enjoying riding towards the end of the race which was a good little step ahead. Joan Mir has a better feeling on the bike and certainly more experience so he’s able to extract more from the bike, it’s motivating, and we need to study what he is doing. It’s a positive weekend, despite the result, because we got a lot of really good information, and we know what areas to follow and also which areas we should not with the setting. There’s room to keep improving.
