Improving his best lap time by half a second between the sessions, Luca Marini was the author to a busy opening day at his home race but was left wanting more. Working on a two pronged approach, the Italian and his side of the garage began to run through items ahead of the Monday Test while looking for improvements to increase their pace this weekend.

Setting a best lap of 1’32.388 late in the afternoon, the #10 was a second shy of the top ten as 1.7 seconds split the majority of the field and Marini ultimately finished in 22nd overall. The objective overnight is to improve one lap pace.

Joan Mir spent Friday continuing his recovery from a bout of illness, he and the Repsol Honda Team are aiming to be back out on track from Saturday.

Luca Marini

“I expected more from Friday here and we struggled a bit more than what I had hoped. The test we did here before was not to prepare for this race, so we are not starting with some sort of big advantage. The condition of the circuit is very good, it’s very fast but we need to check the data on our side to make some improvements. Our distance on race pace is not far but we still need to find some time on the time attack. I hope Mir is feeling better tomorrow.”