The debut for Repsol Honda couldn’t have been more difficult for Luca Marini. The rider finished second to last in the Qatar MotoGP Grand Prix, ending up in 20th place, just ahead of Jack Miller (Red Bull KTM) – a rival he had the opportunity to chase during part of Sunday’s race in Losail.
The Italian mentioned that he suffered from an issue with the RC213V, but admitted that even under normal conditions, he might not have been able to achieve a much better result: ‘A tough weekend. I had a little issue in the race, and for this my pace was so slow. But anyway, also without that issue maybe I couldn’t fight for good positions as my teammates did’.
Despite the difficulties, Marini also saw this race as an opportunity to learn: ‘I understood many things during this race because fortunately I’ve seen in my pit board that someone was behind me and I said: «Why? Who?». But then I saw also the pit bord of Jack and I said: «Maybe it’s him!». So I let him pass and tried to follow him, also to don’t risk to go below the tyre pressure because with this quick procedure was quite strange and I didn’t want to take the penalty for the tyre pressure. And I tried to understand something behind him, because KTM now is really strong, it improved a lot from last year, so I think that something positive came to my mind. It’s clear for now what we need to do, but we need a little bit of time to try more things’.