Despite "a nice seventh place", Johann Zarco remains frustrated with the performance of his Honda in the sprint race.
Johann zarco achieved his best start to the weekend since the Catalan Grand Prix two months ago. He automatically advanced to Q2 following his eighth-place finish in yesterday's practice session.He managed to qualify in sixth place, which is his third-best qualifying result of the year. In the sprint race, he finished seventh and scored points, which remains a very encouraging result considering his recent Grands Prix.
Although he finished as the top Honda rider, the Frenchman found himself in seventh place on the first lap and remained there until the finish line. This prevented him from being fully satisfied when he debriefed his race.
"There's still a bit of anger at not being able to maintain the pace of the first ones.", he declared on the microphone of Canal +. “I see even more clearly what I lack during these racing moments. Yet I had good speed this weekend, still there in the sprint race, but I feel I can't relax because I can't ride the bike the way I'd like, and so I try to resist.”
“I had more speed but not enough bike management to have been able to overtake Bagnaia quickly and pull away or follow Di Giannantonio. He closed the door well at the end. I tried to overtake him, I went over the kerb, and then Aldeguer went past. I'm happy I managed to pass him on the line with the acceleration. At least I'm holding onto a nice seventh place.”
"When you're behind the others, you can't make extraordinary corner entries.", he continued. "You have to manage your pace a bit, and as soon as I try to manage it that way, I lose ground in the middle of the corner. Over 15 corners, it makes it difficult to maintain the rhythm. Di Giannantonio did that very well. He overtook me quickly, and then behind Pecco, I told myself I was going to try to find every way to improve my pace, but it wasn't enough."
“We’ll see with the medium rear tire tomorrow, because we think the soft one clearly won’t be suitable for the race. It degrades quite a bit, it creates a lot of movement. From experience, we know I prefer a tire with a little less grip and more stability. Perhaps at the start of the race, the others won’t be able to make as much of a difference because they’ll have a little less grip, so if this plan works, I can stay in the top six. I’d like to do better, but it needs to come back gradually. First, we need to be happy with good points in sprint races, a good weekend. Tomorrow, it would be great if I could be in the top six.”
Results of the sprint race of the Portuguese Grand Prix :
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
