MotoGP | Marini: “Honda is nice to ride, but there's a lot of work to do”

New season, new chapter: in 2024 Honda starts again with Luca Marini, who replaces Marc Marquez in the official team. A new era begins for the House of the Golden Wing and for the rider from Tavullia, who had the opportunity to continue the process of adaptation and learning in Sepang. “I love this new role, I have a good relationship with everyone in the garage and we have a lot of laughs,” said Marini at the end of the three-day shakedown staged in Malaysia.

Luca Marini and Honda had already had a first approach in the Valencia tests in November, but the real work began in these shakedown days, where Honda brought many new features and solutions aimed at improving an RC213V that wants and must return to be competitive. At the end of the three days of testing, Maro takes stock and draws up an initial assessment: “It was a very busy day, with many things to try and I spent a lot of time with the engineers to try to find the direction, but for me it's It was nice, I had fun.”

Fun is precisely what was missing from his predecessor, who took another path to return to feeling those sensations that Marini seems to have felt in his tests with Honda: “I think there have been some small improvements, we need to find more speed, but it seems we are on the right track. After two days of testing, we have gathered a lot of information to work on before Qatar to get some news. The shakedown will also be very useful in view of the next three days of official testing. On that occasion, with all the riders on the track, we will be able to better understand the level of our bike.”

The first contact with Honda in Valencia had not been so exciting, but in Sepang the situation seems to have changed a bit: “There have been some good improvements, also because in Valencia the sensations had not been excellent. Now everything is going in the right direction, although we still have to work in several areas, especially on acceleration, on corner exit to try to have more traction. Then there is aerodynamics, where we have less experience than other manufacturers who are adopting many solutions. But we also have our ideas, I think I gave some very good ones to the Japanese.”

Marini's role now changes, from Ducati standard bearer in a satellite team, he is now part of a great project in the most successful official team in history. This is certainly a huge step forward in terms of professional growth, but also of responsibility and job diversification: “Things change a bit, because you never do two rides in a row with the same bike. You try a lot of things, it's not about finding the best performance, but about understanding the sensations on the bike to find the direction to follow for the whole season.”

“It's a different way of working, but it will pay off for the future and I'm pleased that all the Honda riders have the same sensations, we're going in the same direction, this will make the engineers' work easier. Bradl is the best tester we could have right now. Pedrosa is still a top rider as we also saw in the wild cards, but Stefan works well and we have a good relationship. He will be able to help us a lot,” continues Marini, also praising the work of the test team, with Stefan Bradl as a point of reference on the track.

Honda is working hard to get back to the top and Marini feels that the RC213V can have a lot of room for growth: “The bike has good potential, it's nice to ride when you're alone… Why don't you see the performance of the others (laughs, ed). You feel like you're doing a great job, but then when you cross the finish line the time is a little slower than you expected. We have to work a lot, it's only the first outing with the new bike and it's very different from last year. We have to be intelligent to make progress as quickly as possible, we have concessions but it's not that difficult to do it quickly. Ducati and KTM have been working on their package for years, we have started now.”

“Honda's strengths? It's difficult to say, the bike is easy and beautiful to ride, but to find maximum performance you need something more from a technical point of view. I'm enjoying it, he has a nice chassis, but we need to be faster. At the moment, as I said, the best feature of the bike is that it is nice to ride, but if there is no speed you lose this pleasure,” explains Marini, analyzing his bike.

The experience in Ducati will certainly be able to help him, but the time available to progress is not much, especially considering how quickly the opponents develop: “The experience with Ducati was enough to allow me to develop a bike and I am happy that Honda follows the my directions. I try to be very precise and clear in my comments, to communicate in the best possible way with the Japanese. It can be difficult, but we understand each other and every time they bring something better than you expect. We will have to be intelligent to find the performance quickly because the rivals are making huge steps forward: KTM seems incredible, Yamaha very fast in a straight line. Honda is in a good situation, we have to work, I believe in them and in the project.”