Pedro Acosta pursuit backfires for Luca Marini, “offensive race” for Joan Mir

Luca Marini’s quest to hunt down Pedro Acosta backfired when the HRC rider destroyed his rear tyre and lost a top five finish in the final laps of the Catalan MotoGP.

After losing out to Johann Zarco for seventh and top Honda in the Sprint, Marini made another strong start to jump from tenth to sixth at the start of the grand prix.

The Italian then became embroiled in a battle with Zarco and Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo, getting the better of them both by mid-distance.

Acosta was Marini’s next target and looked vulnerable after being the only rider to pick the soft rear tyre.

Marini reeled in the KTM rider from laps 16-21, but his medium rear paid the price.

“A good weekend overall, we have to be happy to do this at a track which is usually difficult for us,” Marini said.

“In the race I made another fantastic start, then I had a big battle with Zarco and Fabio [Quartararo].

“After I tried to catch Acosta, when I saw he was dropping with the soft, but I completely destroyed the rear tyre by the last four laps and it was impossible to keep my position at the end of the race.”

Marini’s lap times rose sharply as he struggled for grip and overtaken by Quartararo, Ai Ogura and Francesco Bagnaia during the last two laps.

“But anyway, I'm happy to try this [Acosta pursuit], because it could be important topic for us to understand better management of the rear tyre,” Marini said.

“Sometimes we are struggling a little bit in this area and we need to understand why.”

A pair of eighth places meant Barcelona equalled Marini’s second-best weekend of the season, after Balaton Park.

“The weekend here, not just for me but also for Zarco and Mir, shows the progress we are making as a manufacturer,” he said.

“Because Hungary was a really strange track. Bu the pace that we showed today was super strong, and I didn't expect it.

“So the bike has improved, and also myself.

“If you start in the front, it's always an opportunity to stay in the top 5 now.”

Marini will stay at Barcelona to take part in Monday’s private MotoGP test.

“On my side, the biggest topic is to evaluate again the chassis and the swingarm, especially to give the engineers the best feedback to develop another spec of each for next year,” he explained.

“At the moment, we are not sure about the pros and cons, and I think we can do better in the chassis and the swingarm.”

Joan Mir: “An offensive race”

Team-mate Joan Mir started the Catalan Grand Prix from 20th due to a grid penalty, but was able to match the times of Zarco and Marini on his way to eleventh.

“My pace during the race was really good, always better than the riders in front of me so I was able to have an offensive race let’s say. Everything further back in MotoGP is much more interesting!

“It was a really good battle throughout the whole race. Starting 20th was our big limit today, we also didn’t make the best start, but we really needed to do something more on Friday and Saturday.

“We have been testing quite a few things this weekend, settings, parts, so we lost maybe a little bit from the race weekend to gain in the overall picture.”