Luca Marini is now a rider for Repsol Honda in MotoGP, but despite being a factory rider, he will have to start the season with lower expectations than he had in the VR46 satellite team – where he rode the competitive Ducati, while now he will pilot a Honda still looking to be competitive and fight at the top.
The Italian admitted that he has to set a different goal than he had in 2023 and that recovery is a process that will take time and errors must be avoided:
– I think that my personal target that I need to put on myself now is different from the past. I think with Ducati you are sure you can fight for the podium every race. Now we have to arrive to that target. It will take some time, we need to patient and with calm working in a good way to follow the good path and don’t lose time; to follow the good direction, if we go in a bad direction then maybe we’ll lose too much time. Because now the race weekends are really short, the moment to try the stuff is only Friday and most of the times on Friday you also have to try to go directly into the Q2.
After the first test, Marini expressed satisfaction with the direction taken: ‘We will need a little bit more time, more testing and everything, but for sure the bike now works really well. It’s a good way, it’s a good start in my opinion’.