Honda’s problems in MotoGP seem to have no end. This Saturday, Johann Zarco was the manufacturer’s best rider in the sprint race of the Austrian GP, but could not get beyond 15th place, as he found it difficult to remain competitive even when accelerating.
The Frenchman from LCR Honda told the press that the performance ultimately fell short of expectations: “I was angry after qualifying and after the race because the good performance on Friday, even on Saturday morning, with many more laps with quality, much better performance on each lap, gave me hope to do better in the race. But in qualifying I was 17th after doing my best. So we have such a limit on this bike that every time you try to achieve more you can’t reach it and at the end of qualifying you have the same result. And in the race the conditions were one of the worst of the weekend maybe because of the heat. The grip conditions were really difficult to manage.‘.
Zarco then said: ‘I tried to follow Fabio (Quartararo)I made a mistake, and then after that mistake I tried to resist, and Raúl (Fernandez) overtook me. I couldn’t follow him. So we lost too much time at the beginning of the race because we tried to follow the others and made mistakes. And at the end of the race we have a smaller lead than the top riders or even the top ten. This means that when the tyre is fresh and has potential, the bike can’t exploit that potential. So, yes, we lost less time at the end of the race, but only because we couldn’t exploit the full potential of the tyre at the beginning. The first third of the race is the most difficult and the one where we lose the most time.‘.
The #5 admitted that he would also have to struggle with this situation in Sunday’s race in Spielberg: “In the main race I have to accept that we will lose time at the beginning of the race, but then try to find a good balance on the bike to be super consistent and hope to catch up with the others in the lap time line halfway through the race. And from there maybe gain positions back and get a decent result‘.
When asked if the problems were related to the rear tire, Zarco replied: “It’s not the grip on the rear axle, because if that were the case, we would gain power with a new tyre. We slide, we don’t turn enough. We can’t make mistakes. If we make a mistake, we try to come out of the corner and the bike moves or does a lot of wheelies. And you can see that compared to other bikes; you can’t follow anyone. I was able to follow Pol Espargaró in qualifying, that was the difference. I could see that I wasn’t going crazy, and we lack power when we have the accelerator in our hand. And that’s a shame, because to race you have to accelerate. Full throttle, yes, but our bike is slower when we accelerate. What do we do? And that’s the problem at the moment: we’re trying to race without accelerating.‘.
