Jerez: A good performance on the weekend helped Joan Mir as he extracted the maximum from the Spanish Grand Prix as he gained eight places after battling back to 12th place finish in the latest race of the MotoGP Championship 2024. His teammate at the Honda Team, Luca Marini will aim to look for answers during Monday’s test at the Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto.
Record-breaking weekend crowds of 300,000 were treated to another Spanish Grand Prix for the history books on Sunday. With blue skies and not a hint of Saturday’s rain, Joan Mir was determined to repeat his forward progress from the Sprint and end a complicated weekend on a high. Starting well, the #36 moved from 20th to 16th in the space of a single lap and maintained a steady pace further into the points, the Honda Team informed in a release on Monday.
Locked in a battle with Raul Fernandez for most of the race, Mir crossed the line in 12th and just under a tenth of a second from his best result of the season so far. The 2020 World Champion was full of praise for the Honda Team, which worked diligently throughout. His attention immediately turns to continuing to find improvements in testing.
Marini’s Sunday was complicated by the opening melee of the 25-lap Spanish Grand Prix. Initially launching well, the Italian found himself embroiled in contact down the field and did his best to recover from there. Unable to match his pace from earlier, the #10 and his team are aiming to use Monday’s test to help them find what was missing.
The entire Honda Team will remain at the Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto for the in-season MotoGP Test. Both Joan Mir and Luca Marini are looking forward to another day of riding in order to continue developing the 2024 Honda RC213V.
Joan Mir thanked the team for their work in helping him finish 12th and make progress.
“We have to be content with what we achieved today. From the start of the weekend until now we have been able to improve, and I really have to say thanks to my team for their work in helping us make this progress.
“I was able to make a solid race, I think achieving the best that I could with the package that we have at the moment. Of course, the gap is still very big and we need to keep on working but tomorrow, Monday, we have a test. I am looking forward to trying what we have to understand what the next steps are,” the Honda Team quoted him as saying in the release.
Luca Marini, who finished 17th in Spanish GP, said they will try to find reasons for the huge gap between him and Joan Mir during Monday’s test runs.
“It was a really tough race. At the start, I launched well but then there was a lot of contact in the back, and we took some damage. When I tried to find my rhythm, I was much slower than I was expecting and the gap to Joan Mir was too big. We need to understand it and fortunately we have the test tomorrow. It will be important not just for the future but also for the next races. For sure Joan made a good race, but we are still far,” he said.
–IANS
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