Working until the end – Solidarity GP preparations begin for Repsol Honda Team
Circuit de Barcelona-CatalunyaA last push for Luca Marini and Joan Mir as they aim to end the season on high in Barcelona, the pair finishing almost nose to tail in 16th and 18th respectively on Friday.
The waning light of Autumn made for a chilly start to proceedings around the 4.66 kilometres of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, but hot or cold – the Repsol Honda Team had work to do. With the aim of returning to the top of the MotoGP World Championship, every lap and point of data is valuable for the Repsol Honda Team and Honda HRC staff – the riders making the most of all available track time.
Starting the day by comfortably running inside the top ten, Luca Marini would improve his best lap time by over a second as he fought to remain in the top ten. Eventually finishing in 16th overall, the Italian was half a second shy of the top ten and a direct trip to Q2. The evolution of the track overnight and with more running before Qualifying will be key as Marini aims to emulate the speed of Johann Zarco and Takaaki Nakagami.
Joan Mir would end Friday just under two tenths from his teammate, walking away unharmed from a late crash at Turn 10 in the afternoon. The #36 had been able to set a steady rhythm throughout the day, building his speed and improving the feeling with his Honda RC213V. Working especially on rear grip, Mir made improvements over the course of the day and remains hopeful of delivering a strong Saturday showing.
LCR Honda’s Johann Zarco was a stand out performer on the Honda RC213V as he ended the day in fourth, 0.279s back from the top spot.
Overall we have been able to have a productive day and understand the situation of our weekend, good to start building the base. With the soft tyre the grip is unbelievable, especially in the first lap. The track is in a strange condition; I think there was a car race here last week, so it felt a bit weird. It’s not worse, just different and I think it will keep improving as the weekend goes on. I think that the performance of Zarco and also Taka are very encouraging for us, it shows that there is speed and potential in our package and we just need to keep working to unlock it all.
Overall we have been able to have a productive day and understand the situation of our weekend, good to start building the base. With the soft tyre the grip is unbelievable, especially in the first lap. The track is in a strange condition; I think there was a car race here last week, so it felt a bit weird. It’s not worse, just different and I think it will keep improving as the weekend goes on. I think that the performance of Zarco and also Taka are very encouraging for us, it shows that there is speed and potential in our package and we just need to keep working to unlock it all.
I crashed with my second tyre in the ‘qualifying’ of today which certainly limited how competitive we were. Tonight, we need to check what happened and compare the second tyre, I was feeling strong with the first tyre and make a pretty good lap. The performance of the bike improved over the course of the day but we still have a bit of work to do with the rear grip. There’s margin to improve and I think we can make quite an interesting Qualifying tomorrow. It will be important to see how the temperature and grip changes from today to tomorrow.
I crashed with my second tyre in the ‘qualifying’ of today which certainly limited how competitive we were. Tonight, we need to check what happened and compare the second tyre, I was feeling strong with the first tyre and make a pretty good lap. The performance of the bike improved over the course of the day but we still have a bit of work to do with the rear grip. There’s margin to improve and I think we can make quite an interesting Qualifying tomorrow. It will be important to see how the temperature and grip changes from today to tomorrow.
One final race for the season. We have been working a lot in private tests and there are still a few things to prepare in order to give all of the Honda HRC riders the best possible situation on Tuesday. This is always a challenging track for us with the relatively low grip, so it’s good to have a race here to keep working on some of our weaker points. Tomorrow we push for more.
One final race for the season. We have been working a lot in private tests and there are still a few things to prepare in order to give all of the Honda HRC riders the best possible situation on Tuesday. This is always a challenging track for us with the relatively low grip, so it’s good to have a race here to keep working on some of our weaker points. Tomorrow we push for more.
