Close fought Austrian GP begins for Repsol Honda Team
Red Bull Ring - SpielbergThe red-hot European Summer continued in Austria as temperatures sat in the mid 30s all day, Luca Marini and Joan Mir battling through to earn 16th and 24th place respectively.
With ambient temperatures at 32°C and the track creeping towards 40°C, the MotoGP World Championship riders had even more to contend with on the opening day of the Austrian GP. Testing new items for the Repsol Honda Team RC213V, both Luca Marini and Joan Mir were straight to work in each of the sessions. Honda’s efforts were boosted by Stefan Bradl’s appearance as a wildcard.
Marini has now settled into his form inside the Repsol Honda Team, consistently able to challenge his teammate and Johann Zarco for the top Honda position. This continued on Friday in Spielberg, the Italian finishing just 0.2s behind Zarco and 16th overall – able to improve by almost a second between the morning and afternoon. The steady progress made by HRC engineers has kept Marini positive and focused on the future as they continue to make gains each weekend.
On the other side of the garage, Joan Mir was immediately able to make his presence known as he ended the morning session in ninth with a 1’30.388. Able to find positives in the new items from the first session, Mir was feeling confident of continuing this speed in the afternoon but found himself restricted by traffic and yellow flags when it came time to do a fast lap. The #36 is remaining upbeat despite being unable to improve his time in the afternoon.
Times are as tight as ever at the Red Bull Ring, just 1.5 seconds dividing the top 20 around the ten corners of the Austrian track. Forecasts call for similar conditions on Saturday, the scene set for another scorching Sprint in Spielberg.
We had another good day, and I am very happy that we are able to make another improvement to the bike. It’s important to remain focused on the steps that we are taking and that there is progress being made. If we can take something positive like this from every GP, it’s encouraging. Conditions today were a bit tricky, there’s not a lot of grip but we’re still able to make improvements. Certainly we have more to do and we need to keep working to stay close to everyone else. Let’s see what’s possible to do on Saturday.
We had another good day, and I am very happy that we are able to make another improvement to the bike. It’s important to remain focused on the steps that we are taking and that there is progress being made. If we can take something positive like this from every GP, it’s encouraging. Conditions today were a bit tricky, there’s not a lot of grip but we’re still able to make improvements. Certainly we have more to do and we need to keep working to stay close to everyone else. Let’s see what’s possible to do on Saturday.
The new item we brought today was a positive step for us and shows we have found a direction to go. I was feeling very good this morning, and also in the afternoon honestly, we tried the hard front and a very used rear medium – our lap times and pace were quite good like this. When we put the new tyre for our time attack, we had a strange feeling with the bike and there was a lot of traffic and yellow flags. This circuit you have to be very precise, it’s very easy to run wide with the heavy braking and you find a lot of other riders and flags because of that. Our position doesn’t show our real potential.
The new item we brought today was a positive step for us and shows we have found a direction to go. I was feeling very good this morning, and also in the afternoon honestly, we tried the hard front and a very used rear medium – our lap times and pace were quite good like this. When we put the new tyre for our time attack, we had a strange feeling with the bike and there was a lot of traffic and yellow flags. This circuit you have to be very precise, it’s very easy to run wide with the heavy braking and you find a lot of other riders and flags because of that. Our position doesn’t show our real potential.
