Repsol Honda Team battle track conditions in Catalan sprint

BARCELONA: Hot temperatures left Joan Mir and Luca Marini hunting grip over the course of the sprint race after gains in Qualifying. Steps forward continued for Joan Mir on Saturday at the Gran Premi de Catalunya, the #36 improving his best lap time by 0.7s overnight. Setting the fastest lap in Q1 of 1'39.524 saw Mir start 21st on the grid. From here, Mir would steadily progress through the field over the course of the 12-lap Sprint to take 15th at the chequered flag.

Although unable to battle for points in the Sprint, Mir was content with the information gathered for HRC's engineers.

Luca Marini was able to keep pace with his Repsol Honda Team teammate throughout Saturday, qualifying less than a tenth of a second behind Mir. The pace matching continued into the Sprint as Marini stuck with his stablemate for the majority of the race and ended just over 3.5 seconds back. Pleased with the progress made in recent weeks, Marini is aiming to again stay with his teammate and hopeful of avoiding early race incidents.

Both Repsol Honda Team riders are confident of further improvements on Sunday and are aiming to finish the weekend on a positive before the trip to Mugello. The 24-lap Gran Premi de Catalunya will start at 14:00 Local Time and looks set to be another close-fought affair. "It was an important Sprint race for the information to give to the engineers, so I am happy we were able to get some good data. We have made some progress in some areas and need to keep working in others and at this track it really shows. For Sunday I think there's still some margin to improve tomorrow and try to fight for the points which will be our objective. Right now, it's about the future," said Honda rider Joan Mir.

"I was able to finish much closer to my teammate today which is a positive. We are working a lot on the bike to keep improving and I think we found something at the Mugello Test which is working here. It's better to ride the bike but we can keep working to gain on the overall performance. There wasn't a lot of grip on track today, the conditions were very tricky and I think you could see that in the race," said Honda rider Luca Marini.