Luca Marini’s Honda MotoGP bike “unrideable”, tyre pressure “completely dropped”

Honda’s Luca Marini says he experienced a drop in front tyre pressure from the off in the MotoGP Indonesian Grand Prix sprint and was unable to avoid a post-race penalty.

The Italian qualified on the back of the second row and had shown strong pace in practice to be a frontrunner in Saturday’s sprint at Mandalika.

He engaged in a tough early battle with eventual winner Marco Bezzecchi, before taking the chequered flag in sixth spot.

However, Luca Marini was later handed an eight-second time penalty for a tyre pressure infringement, which dropped him out of the points to 13th.

The Honda rider revealed after the race that his front tyre pressure “completely dropped” at the start for reasons unknown at this stage, which made his bike “unrideable” in the opening laps.

“I took the penalty for the front tyre pressure, because when I started it was already super low,” he explained.

“I don’t know why, but it completely dropped and the bike was unrideable the first three, four laps, impossible to turn and the feeling was not good.

“Then at a certain point I tried to let some riders behind me pass me to raise up the pressure, but it was not possible.

“So, anyway, another occasion missed but the feeling with the bike overall was good. Let’s try again tomorrow if we are able to fix this thing with the pressure.”

Marini isn’t sure if he could have made a genuine podium challenge without those early tyre pressure issues and is wary of making predictions for Sunday when the medium rear tyre likely becomes the main race choice.

“I don’t know,” he replied when asked if a podium was realistic today.

“We will see. With the medium rear with the long race of tomorrow it’s a little bit difficult for everybody.

“But we will see the pace. After the warm-up we will have some more information and try to understand.”