Japanese bikes seem to have discovered something at the Indian Grand Prix that had been missing until then. However, Joan Mir cannot indicate where Honda improved significantly to achieve one of the best results of the season.
Still, Mir says Misano’s tests were more important than what appeared to the press:
– It’s a bit of a mystery. For sure Marc (Marquez) has taken a big step. He managed to be a little bit stronger than the other weekends, but for me, we were the ones who were able to take a big step to be at his level. Of course, the Misano tests were important, not so much because of the position, but because I was able to do a lot of laps. And if you see the last few laps of the test, I was very fast on used tyres and that means we understand something there. That I got the confidence back. And when we got to a whole new track, we probably had the ability to adapt faster than the others and we were quick right away.
The #36 also stated in a debrief after the long race that, despite everything, he expected to be a little faster in the race, something that was not possible due to the problem he had in the rear tire:
– We were able to be fast and improve all weekend, something I didn’t expect. I expected to be fast on Friday, but yesterday we managed to qualify very well. That was pretty good. Then in the warm up we showed good pace and in the race we were fighting for the position I expected. I honestly expected a little more, but with this problem (…)