A positive Indian Grand Prix for the Repsol Honda Team sees Joan Mir finish close to the podium, with Marc Márquez placing ninth despite a crash.
After the exciting sprint race on Saturday, in which Marc Márquez achieved a brilliant third position and Joan Mir crashed out but provided a solid showing, the main race of the weekend once again demonstrated the improvement of the Repsol Honda Team riders.
Joan Mir completed his best weekend of the season, managing to go through to Q2, qualifying on the second row, and putting together a good race in which he held onto a spot in the front group from start to finish, fighting for fourth place until the chequered flag.
Repsol Honda teammate Marc Márquez excited the fans with a great start. As in Saturday’s sprint race, he moved up into fourth before the end of the first lap, but on Lap 6, when on the tail of Pecco Bagnaia, he lost the front end at Turn 1 and went down. Márquez rejoined the race and recovered to rise from sixteenth position to ninth.
In seven days’ time, the fourteenth event on the calendar takes place: The Japanese Grand Prix at Mobility Resort Motegi.
Marc Márquez – 9th
“If you just looked at the final result and see ninth you wouldn’t know the whole story of our race – but to achieve what could be considered our ‘normal’ result after a crash is a positive. It was a really small crash but I was pushing very hard to stay in the slip stream of the bikes ahead, I went a bit wide and just fell. I came into this race with the motivation of the Sprint podium, so when I saw Pecco and Martin make a mistake I decided I needed to push. This led to the mistake. The most important thing was finishing the race, overall our rhythm was very close to Quartararo so I think we can be overall happy with what we have done this weekend.”
Joan Mir – 5th
“A great race today. I am super happy with our performance over the weekend and of course to finish in fifth position is a big boost for us. The team and I did a great job to understand the bike more, how you need to make the lap time and be fast this weekend. On the other hand, we had a small thing in the end of the race that meant I lost ground to Fabio and we dropped back. Finally in the end we were able to push and try to catch Binder after I almost crashed. It was a big save! But yeah, a really nice race overall and I have enjoyed my time in India. Let’s keep it up in Japan!”
