Johann Zarco began the MotoGP season with a 12th place in the Portuguese Grand Prix. Now, he is looking forward to the upcoming race in Portugal, where he hopes to be in contention for a top-ten finish and to qualify within the top twelve.
The LCR Honda rider expressed his excitement for the Portuguese race: ‘I think we’ll not have wet conditions, only today it’s raining, and a very strong weekend. The performance of Marc [Márquez] last year was quite impressive. Also the comments from Honda’s staff say that here they got good comments about the bike and they were competitive. So I’m quite curious to see where we can be – knowing that Qatar wasn’t the best one to be competitive or try to be in the top ten. But we are not so far from it. So maybe here I can fight for this Q2 and fight for this top ten – this would be amazing and I just hope to get better. Knowing that I can ride well the bike, I expect that here I can match well this feeling. I remember very well the difference or what was goood with Ducati. So once again it will be a good point to understand the difference. I just hope to have still a good feeling, but even better to get faster and more competitive than in Qatar’.
When asked about his level of adaptation to the Honda at this moment, Zarco admitted that there is still room for improvement: ‘It’s hard to say, but really we are not using 100% right now. But like in Qatar if I could use the full 100% or even if I got better, maybe I would have finished tenth; it wasn’t something to be in the top five, because all the package is not ready yet to do this race in low 1m53s every lap like in Qatar. But it’s normal. At least the real difference is less than one second; maybe six or seven tenths. So this means that if you get three tenths better, we can be in the target we want. So that’s the way I see the things and I think it’s not a bad way’.
Finally, the French rider praised Honda’s work method: ‘They really changed things to develop in the same way as the European brands’.