Mir leads Hondas home in Assen Sprint
TT Circuit AssenA day of progress for Joan Mir as he captured 14th in the Sprint, pleased with data gathered as attentions turn to Sunday. Luca Marini was victim to an unforunate early end.
With an intense evening of work behind them, the Repsol Honda Team approached Saturday with their usual determination, aiming to extract all the day had to offer. Joan Mir recovered well from a tough Friday to improve his one-lap pace into the 1’32s for Q1 and end two tenths behind leading Honda Zarco. Following this up with a strong start when the lights went out in the race, Mir would set a steady and consistent pace in the Sprint to end in 14th. Avoiding any mistake, the #36 finished well and gathered important information for the future while demonstrating his pace.
Luca Marini qualified just 0.130s behind his teammate and was eager to put together a strong Sprint to gather data to improve further on Sunday. Unfortunately, he was forced to retire early with an issue during the opening stages of the race. The Repsol Honda Team will take the time to fully diagnose what occured but are already confident it will not be a factor during the Grand Prix.
The 26-lap Dutch GP is scheduled to commence at 14:00 Local Time before the quick turn around for the MotoGP paddock to the German GP next week.
We had a solid race today; our pace was quite consistent, and I felt like I put in a lot of effort. We know the areas we have to improve and at the moment it’s about giving the best of myself each time we’re on the bike. Right now it’s very important to finish races, get information and work for things to come in the future. Another chance to go again tomorrow in the full race and see we can do over the longer distance, the conditions could change a lot.
At the start I already felt something strange with the bike and after a lap I had to come back to the pit. I wanted to understand the hard front, so I tried to continue but it was clear we weren’t able to. The team will investigate what happened deeply, but we already know it won’t be a problem tomorrow – this is always positive. We can learn a lot from the Sprint so we just two laps we missed out on some data, especially in regard to the tyres. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow.
