The Repsol Honda Team pairing made steps forward on Friday, but Mir and Marini were left wanting more with Saturday gains the target.
Both Joan Mir and Luca Marini were eager to get to work and sample the new resurfaced COTA track as practice began on Friday morning. A session without major incident, the pair laid the foundations for their weekends with Marini taking 15th and Mir finishing just behind in 16th.
Improving from a 2’04.435 in the morning to a 2’03.444 in the afternoon saw Mir take a step forward, finding a second. There was even more time to be found for the #36, but an unfortunate crash at Turn 15 on his final flying lap of the day limited his overall potential. The 2020 MotoGP World Champion was unharmed in the fall. As in the previous two races, Mir is more confident in his potential race pace for the Sprint and the Grand Prix.
Luca Marini returned to happy hunting grounds in Austin and started the day as the fastest Honda rider. Like his teammate, the Italian made a step between sessions to drop his best time to a 2’03.521. Although the improvements were significant, Marini was left frustrated with his final position.
Both riders will head to Q1 on Saturday morning to decide their grid position for the Sprint and Sunday’s Grand Prix of the Americas. The Sprint will run over 10 laps, starting at 15:00 Local Time on Saturday, April 13.
Joan Mir
20TH 2’03.444
“Today followed a similar pattern to what we saw in Portimao, unfortunately. There are some areas we need to work on but it will take some time I think. It’s important that we know what we need to do. The good point is that I think on race pace we can be stronger, my overall position today isn’t fully accurate because of the crash. It was just a small one and I am OK.”
Luca Marini
21ST 2’03.521
“When we put in the soft rear tyre we are not able to take the maximum benefit from it so it is important that we work to improve this in the future. We have some work to do tonight with the team because the gap is big. With the medium tyre we are closer to everyone. It’s just the third race so we are still early in the project, I know we will keep improving.”
- From Repsol Honda / HRC
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