Luca Marini: “We can fight for P7 or P8, but we have to solve this problem”

Luca Marini followed up his top Honda qualifying performance (13th) and best Sprint race finish of the season (10th) with 14th place in Sunday’s Australian MotoGP.

The Italian set the fastest race lap by a Honda rider (+0.646s) on the penultimate lap of the grand prix, a quirk matched by Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha), Enea Bastianini (Ducati) and Fabio di Giannantonio (Ducati).

Marini’s Repsol team-mate Joan Mir and LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami set their best race laps on 21 of 27, with Johann Zarco also comparatively late on lap 18.

While Bastianini and to a lesser extent di Giannantonio have renowned tyre-saving skills, the performance delay for the Honda riders underlined difficulties generating heat in the rear tyre when using ‘harder’ compounds.

“It cost us so many laps to put temperature on the edge of the harder compound [left side] of the [soft rear] tyre,” said Marini, who also lost ground at the start when he had to avoid a spinning Marc Marquez.

“For this, we are not able to fight with the others, especially against KTM and Aprilia.

“We are slow at the beginning. But then after six laps, when the rear tyre is ready, the pace started to be super competitive and I could enjoy a lot.

“The feeling with the bike was one of the best of the season.

“So we have to try to understand how to make the rear tyre work better. This is the same problem.”

“It’s a matter of weight distribution”

Although yet to break into the grand prix top ten on the RC213V, Marini is encouraged by the progress made so far this season.

His only point during the opening 13 rounds came after post-race tyre pressure penalties in Germany, but Marini has since scored in three of the last four rounds (being taken out in Indonesia).

“We already solved many problems,” he said. “Now the bike is much better than last year and the beginning of the season.

“But still when the [tyre] compound is so hard, it's difficult for us.”

The 27-year-old says the area to work on is clear.

“For sure, it’s a matter of weight distribution in the bike,” he explained. “We have so much weight in the front because in the past the [successful] bikes were like this.

“Especially with the Bridgestone tyres, [Honda was] always winning with this traditional way to build the bike for the Japanese.

“For the rider, it is also fantastic to have this kind of feeling with the front tyre.

"But the problem is that the rear is the best part of the Michelin tyres and we are not able to use all the potential of the rear tyre.

“For sure, the target for next year will be to try to change a little bit the weight distribution and to load more the rear tyre, like the other bikes do.”

While Ducati is renowned for its rear grip, Marini thinks another manufacturer is even better at putting heat quickly into the rear rubber.

“I think we have to look at KTM especially because they are the master of this,” he said.

“Already in lap one maybe sometimes they push even too much on the rear tyre.

“So maybe they are on the opposite side, but we have to work, try to analyse them and try to find a way to improve this situation.

“Because, in my opinion, if we are able to solve it, we can fight for P7 or P8 at the moment. 

"But we have to find a solution for this problem.”

Marini finished 24 seconds from victory on Sunday and nine seconds behind a multi-rider fight for sixth-to-eighth places.

Zarco was the leading Honda rider in 12th, five-seconds behind that battle and four seconds ahead of Marini.