Repsol Honda team take positive lessons from confidence-building Sprint

Portimao [Portugal], March 24 : A day of improvements for Joan Mir and Luca Marini in Portugal, the pair was pleased to finish the Sprint with good information and direction for the Portuguese Grand Prix.
Despite a muted start to the day with Qualifying, the Repsol Honda Team were ultimately left with positive feelings as setup changes for the Sprint Race saw both Mir and Marini make improvements. The pair head into Sunday looking to emulate this progress once more as they remain focused on building the project ahead of them.
Starting 20th, Mir launched well but found himself in a tangle of riders through Turn 1 and his progress briefly stalled. Keeping his focus, the #36 would produce a steady march up the order to finish as the first Honda rider home. Passing Morbidelli and Augusto Fernandez in the closing stages of the race, Mir walked away pleased with the pace he had shown compared to that of the top ten. Mir would ultimately finish in 14th.
Marini entered the 12-lap Sprint focusing purely on himself and his riding, out to collect as much information as possible. Starting well, he attached himself to the other Honda riders and worked to stay with them throughout the race. Pre-Sprint setup changes yielded some positives for the Italian who is looking for further improvements, and more laps completed, in Sunday's feature race. Marini crossed the line in 18th place.
The 25-lap Portuguese Grand Prix will have both Mir and Marini searching for more progress on race day as they continue the development of the Honda RC213V.
"Our race was quite good in the end after we took a pretty big risk with the setup. It's still a new bike and we are learning things every exit. In the morning, we weren't able to make the step forward that we needed to so we suffered in Qualifying. In the race my pace was close to that of the top ten but starting so far back limits you. We have to be happy with the step we made in the race because we were able to improve our race pace by a second, " Honda rider Joan Mir.
"I went into the Sprint today with a different setting that we wanted to try across the 12 laps of the short race to understand the behaviour of the bike. I think this helped us to find something in the exit of the corners but we sacrificed a little bit in other areas. For us the Sprint is a good opportunity to try things. Now it's time to analyse the data and also check what Joan and his team did to improve overall. We still have Warm Up tomorrow to try a few things and keep on improving," said Honda rider Luca Marini.