On his return to action, the Repsol Honda Team rider finishes eighth overall on the first day of the French Grand Prix. Joan Mir places thirteenth.
The start of the fifth round of the season, held at Le Mans, took place with low temperatures but under clear skies.
Marc Márquez, who was back on his Honda RC213V after more than a month out of competition, completed a positive first day in France. Even after suffering two crashes, the Repsol Honda Team rider was the eighth fastest of the day, achieving a best time of 1:31.432 and going straight into Q2.
Joan Mir started well on Friday by setting the sixth fastest time in P1. In the afternoon, the Repsol Honda Team rider also suffered a crash and finally, with a best time of 1:31.800, was thirteenth overall.
He will have to be amongst the fastest two riders in Q1 on Saturday if he wants to compete in the session that decides the starting grid for both the Sprint Race and Sunday’s French GP.
MARC MÁRQUEZ – 8th 1’31.432
“Today I am very happy overall; it was a good day. I crashed two times; the second time was a ‘acceptable’ crash because I was pushing at the limit on a hot lap – it can happen. After a month and a half at home, it’s not easy to go out and straight away start pushing so we have to be content with what we have done today as we made it to Q2. The objective for tomorrow is to maintain this position in the front three rows of the grid. Of course, the weather could change things here a lot, but we will keep working and adapting to whatever happens. I still need to work a bit to keep improving my feeling and also to improve the performance overall.”
JOAN MIR – 13th 1’31.800
“We tried a new chassis today in the morning and I was able to improve my feeling, riding more comfortably but we still need to adapt the setting and myself to take the maximum from it. Everything in the morning was very easy, then in the afternoon it was a little more complicated and we need to analyse tonight what changed from practice to practice. We will keep working tomorrow in a similar way, looking for those last few tenth to fight for Q2.”
