Luca Marini and Repsol Honda continue to seek substantial improvements in the competitiveness of the RC213V. This Tuesday, the rider was only 20th on the final day of preseason testing in Qatar, just behind his teammate Joan Mir.
The Italian explained that, despite the setbacks, the work program was fulfilled and there were improvements… although he recognizes that he is still far from where he wants to be: ‘On the physical side I was perfect. It was a tough day because we started quite late – because there was also a red flag, there were some problems at the beginning and also Taka [Nakagami] went out with new tyres and destroyed the tyres with the sand on track. So we had to wait a little bit. And then we tried something big on the bike, but it was not good, so we lost a lot of time in the first hour. For this we were a little bit tight with the plan. But I think that we tried everything we needed to try, we understand many things, so now we have a lot of data and we can prepare the GP in the best way. It looks like that we are still far away, but the feeling on the bike has improved. I’m satisfied on one side, but for sure the gap is really huge – especially when we want to put the new soft tyres, we cannot use them well’.
Regarding what needs to be worked on the most, Marini was unequivocal: ‘Grip now. To use better the rear tyre – on the entry, on the middle of the corner, on the exit. Now we have to look only at this part of the bike because it’s where we are missing more. For sure we are also lacking other things in some other parts, but now the grip is what doesn’t let us to be fast and strong with the soft rear tyre especially, but also with the pace with used tyres. So we need to improve in this area; it isn’t only on the exit, but also on entry because I was following all the other bikes, so I could see they are stronger than us in this area’.