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Luca Marini concluded this Friday in Portimao with a decidedly meager balance, given the final position in the standings and also a crash at the end of the session. But this does not seem to faze him at all, because the Luca who shows up to talk to journalists is calm and aware that the true potential of the bike is not the one expressed today. There is undoubtedly much more work to be done, but the road has at least been marked out.
"A normal day, at the end now our potential is still far from what is needed to be able to fight for important positions - explained Luca - I think that from last year to this year all the bikes have made a very big step forward. Last year it was the first race of the year in Portimao and so even a little bit Honda still managed to do well, but they were all a little bit looking for perfection. Instead, this year it seems like all the manufacturers have started the season at close to 100 percent of their performance."
Are you guys still not at your full potential?
"We are still a long way from our 100 percent of this package we have now, so I think if we can put it all together we could already be much closer, however, being all new we are still figuring things out.It still takes some time, but in the end I'm only sorry that I crashed because I think I could have done a good lap, not enough obviously to get into Q2, but at least better to be a little bit higher in the standings."
Can you explain the crash?
"I touched the white line. Basically the wind got up a lot in the last minutes of FP2 and it was pushing right in that direction there, so it pushed me a little bit out of turn 7. I thought I was staying there, not touching the white line, but instead I caught the white line and went down."
At least you seem calm, I mean not agitated at least.
"Because I'm on the bike, so I know the bike has something, however the moment we push to go hard it becomes very complicated. It's hard to pull out a good lap, especially on the rear, it's a bit nervous here in Portimao.There are a lot of ups and downs, the track is never flat, so it gets a little tricky, again because of our lack of grip at the rear, so we're working to try to at least fix things from that point of view."
You say you are far from 100 percent. Can you give a percentage?
"Yes, but randomly, completely. I don't know, I feel that we still have to put everything together, then we have to continue development to get to reduce the gap more from the others, but in my opinion now if we put everything together our 100 percent we could be under a second from the first. We can make it in every exit, let's say, instead right now it's difficult to be under the second. In percentage it's difficult though to quantify what is missing to be under the second."
Do you enjoy working in the box with all the Japanese listening to you?
"It's great. We are always working with a good connection to find improvements, however, it takes time because they collect a lot of my feedback anyway, we talk together, we try to understand together what are the points of the bike where we are suffering and how we can improve them. Also what solutions we can bring and things are already coming, but then it takes time to put it all together. But in my opinion there is a good atmosphere inside the box, of course everyone would like to achieve results in a short time, but you can't gain half a second in two weekends, we have to gain a tenth a weekend."
