After two delicate first rounds this season, Luca Marini distinguished himself on Saturday in Argentina by snatching third place on the grid. A superb performance for the Italian, who will therefore start from the front row for the second time in the premier category (the first having been during the San Marino GP last year) and have a good card to play in the race.
We transcribe here all of his remarks made during the post-qualifying press conference.
Luca, it was a pretty crazy Saturday for you. You didn't even have a motorbike available a few hours ago, but you still put in a very good performance in qualifying, after shining during FP2. We imagine you satisfied with this result.
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My team really did an outstanding job, and I would like to thank them. It wasn't easy for them because they had to prepare two motorcycles in just eight hours. Normally they do this in two days. I'm really happy with this result, I feel comfortable. We've had some difficulties since the start of the season, but I feel like we're heading in the right direction now. We resolved a lot of our problems, and the feeling I had at the start of the day was very good. I expected to be strong and fast on this track, and we must not forget that this is the first time that the team has competed on this track. We'll see what happens in the race, I think the warm-up will be very important for us, because so far I haven't had great sensations with the worn tires. We must therefore analyze the data collected during FP2 and try to modify certain things during the warm up. »
As you said, your start to the season was not easy. How then can you explain your current performance on the bike? Did you change anything on it?
« We worked on our issues from winter testing, and we put a big spin on them right after the race in Qatar when we finally had a lot of data to analyze, and we were able to better understand the areas we needed to work on. Now we are in good shape, although, as I said, the electronic part still needs to be improved when we are on worn tyres. We must therefore concentrate on this during the warm-up to hope to have a good race tomorrow. »
Your brother Valentino Rossi makes his debut in car racing this weekend [the nine-time World Champion takes part in the first round of the GT World Challenge Europe]. So it's a very important weekend for your siblings, and we imagine that your result only makes it even tastier.
« Being on the front row in MotoGP is always something special, but as for my brother I didn't really follow what happened today. »
