Johann Zarco has returned to the front of the pack and is all smiles in Portugal, and hopes that his Honda's performance will continue tomorrow.
In Malaysia 15 days ago, Johann zarco had regained confidence After a particularly difficult run of Grands Prix, he holds the record for the most crashes this season, ten of which occurred during races. The overseas tour was the culmination of this negative spiral, before the Frenchman finally experienced a moment of respite at the Sepang circuit.
Having automatically qualified for Q2 on Friday, he returned to the top 10 in Saturday's sprint race and came close on Sunday. This gave him a boost of optimism regarding his performance potential. And right from his first outing on track this morning for FP1, he was on pace, finishing fourth.
He continued in the same vein this afternoon during Practice and finished the first day in sixth place, allowing him to advance directly to Q2 once again. This is an important step to start his weekend on the right foot, and it allows the #5 driver to approach the rest of the Grand Prix with greater confidence. The RC213V seems to be performing well on the Portuguese circuit, and he hopes this will continue on Saturday and Sunday.
“It was a positive Friday, and I was happy to have found the speed immediately. It’s clearly a promising sign for confidence, and the feeling I’m getting from the front end of the bike already confirms the good feeling we had in Malaysia two weeks ago. So I managed to be fast and able to push properly to set a good time, but we still need to find other ways to fine-tune the bike to optimize our pace. We’re working hard to find the right solution.”, did he declare.
“With the medium tires, both front and rear, the bike gave me a satisfying feeling, especially this afternoon, which is positive. Securing a place in Q2 directly allows us to approach Saturday with greater confidence. We will now fully focus our attention on achieving the best possible qualifying result tomorrow morning in order to secure the best possible grid position for Sunday’s sprint race and Grand Prix.”
Results of the Portuguese Grand Prix Practice :
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
