MotoGP | Marini: “Zarco and Mir make the Honda turn better than me”

When Luca Marini announced his move to Honda at the end of last year, he knew he would embark on a complicated path, made up of hard work and little satisfaction, at least looking at the time rankings. This was merciless in his first Sprint as an HRC driver, who finished in last position, over 22 seconds behind the winner Jorge Martin.

However, in the phase in which the driver from Tavullia currently finds himself, even non-positive results such as that of the Sprint in Qatar can help to improve: “The day was very difficult and we need to understand what happened. On Friday everything seemed more normal, but on Saturday it was much more difficult than expected. Even the pace in the Sprint was strange because it was very slow while in the simulation the pace was more normal, aligned with my teammates.”

“What I heard is that I can't turn the bike, I always go wide. I'm very strong in braking, but when it's time to let go of the brakes and lean, Mir and Zarco make the difference. They manage to make the bike run well and we need to understand what happened at this stage, because I feel worse than in the tests and on Friday. But it's normal, we're trying different ways in the settings, we have to work a lot because different things come out in the race, so tomorrow will be interesting too”, explained Marini, maintaining that the 11 laps helped to understand what to work on to take steps forward.

The situation has reversed from one year to the next, Lusail is on paper a friendly track for the HRC driver, who last year experienced a completely different weekend: “The feeling is that the Sprint was very difficult compared to last year last time everything was easy. But we must continue to remain calm, positive, focused on our goals. My goal at the moment is to connect more with the RC213V and get to know it better, in the end it's my first race. I'm calm, I know where I am and what moment we are in. There are positive signs, but they are not constant, sometimes they come out well, other times a little worse.”

The short race of the Qatar Grand Prix was Marini's first as a Honda rider, so the journey is only just beginning. However, there is a glimmer of positivity, brought by Johann Zarco, the second best Honda representative after Joan Mir. The two of them are the point of reference for the Pesaro native: “Zarco set incredible times in qualifying and we looked at his data to understand what he did. He manages to make the bike turn very well in the center of the corner without losing much when braking. Then he has always been strong when exiting corners, even in his Ducati days. So right now he's making it ride very well, even though he's suffering a bit in the race. But this is normal, the bike is different from last year. We are all working in the same direction to achieve the results we want as soon as possible.”

“We will definitely look at the data from the Sprint, we will try something in the warm-up, even if it is during the day and it is only 10 minutes. It will be of little use, but it will be useful to understand my feelings. We try to understand over several laps how it works, but I believe that the worst of the bike comes when the tires have the first decline, if you manage to postpone it as much as possible maybe you'll survive”, concluded Marini.