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Luca Marini was forced to row around at the back of the pack today with his Honda in both qualifying and the Sprint Race. Unfortunately, it is still too early for Luca to be on familiar terms with a Honda that is experiencing one of the most difficult moments in its history in MotoGP, but the rider is taking even these results calmly, confident that he will soon be able to reap the benefits of the work he is doing day after day with his team.
"I keep working to understand this bike," Marini said, " I think we have found something good to improve corner exit, but we lose too much in entry and cornering, so it's not the perfect combination. We have to analyze all the data well to understand what to do with this setup and try to do something better tomorrow. For me, tomorrow morning's warmup will be interesting to try to work with the medium tire, which is different, so I will try to figure out how to use it."
Do you experience the races as if they were tests today?
"We right now can't fight for points in the Sprint Race, so we have to use this track time to better understand the behavior of the bike after several laps. It's something we can't do today on Friday, because you hardly do five or six laps in a row, you don't really understand the tires and everything. You stop too often, the Sprint is a good time to gather information to try to better prepare for the race. But that doesn't mean I go slow on purpose in the Sprint, I push so hard, 100 percent because I want to at least beat my teammates."
What do you think would be important to figure out for tomorrow?
"It would be important to try to figure out how to make the best use of fresh tires on this track, because with new tires we suffer a lot and we are not fast for the time attack. Then when the tires drop in the race, our potential remains more or less that. But the Sprint for me was positive in the sense that we have to make the most of every single lap on the track to collect data and allow the engineers to develop the bike. We are in a hurry to get back to the front and fight for better positions."
Would you take stock of these first two races with Honda?
"Hard to take stock in my opinion. At least in the Sprint I tried a different setup, and some things are really better. We need to find all the best of our setup and put together a basic setup. I think in the long race we will do better, if there was also another day we would do better. The problem for us is that on the weekend with this format we can work very little."
Do you think you will be able to get back fast with this bike as well?
"The gaps will come down when I start to feel good with the bike and can ride well."
