Hungarian MotoGP Sprint result “super boost” for Honda - Luca Marini

A double-top-six for Honda in the Hungarian MotoGP Sprint marked the brand’s best Sprint of the season so far.

Luca Marini and Joan Mir were both inside the top-six in Saturday’s Sprint at Balaton Park, in part thanks to the first corner chaos caused by Fabio Quartararo, in part thanks to the difficulty in overtaking at the stop-start Hungarian track, but also in part thanks to the qualifying performance of both riders (Marini was ninth on the grid and Mir 10th) that put them in a position to take advantage of those factors.

Both Marini and Mir have had a new chassis in Hungary, and a new Honda fairing was introduced in Austria with minor updates versus the one they started the season with.

The Italian said that the Hungary Sprint result was good from a morale perspective inside HRC because it shows the effectiveness of the upgrades that are arriving – although he added there is still “margin”.

“This is a super boost,” Marini told MotoGP.com after the Hungary Sprint.

“Not only for me but for all the engineers, for the Japanese, especially, because they provide us [with] many new parts, new things, in these last couple of races.

“Still we need to work on it and put everything in the best combination – I think there is still some margin, and in the next test we will have even more.

“This is nice. As a rider, also, it’s a great feeling to feel the push from the manufacturer to go back to the victory because the target for everybody is clear and we want all the same.”

Mir: Honda “character” doesn’t need to change

Marini’s post-Sprint comments came after his Honda HRC Castrol teammate Joan Mir also alluded to updates scheduled for a test in Barcelona in the pre-event press conference in Hungary.

“We worked a bit on the details during the season, but the reality is that we didn’t make a huge step forward from the beginning to now,” Mir said.

“We made a step forward last year, before the test, so I think that we are doing small steps forward and we are not stopping doing steps forward.

“So, that is important, I think that we should continue doing that.

“Now, the next step probably will be the test at Barcelona, maybe the next races we start to get something different.

“I don’t really know but I appreciate the effort that Honda is doing.”

Mir also made mention of the progress Honda has made in its race weekend processes this year despite a similar “character” to 2024 for the Japanese factory.

“The method, the character, is very similar [to 2024], but I would say that the impact about when you have some problem that can be solved in a short time period – I see there an important upgrade, we shortened a bit the timings of things that can be solved fast,” Joan Mir told the pre-event press conference in Hungary.

“That is something that in the past we struggled a little bit and I think that we improved.

“Apart from that, the character of the company and everything is quite similar and I don’t think that it has to be really changed at the moment.”