Luca Marini was left feeling unfulfilled by his Sprint performance at the Solidarity Barcelona Mot🦹oGP, which he f🔜inished in 15th.

Marini’s pace, he said, was acceptable, but he lost too much t🦂ime at the start when he was unable to take advantage of the grip off🧔ered by a fresh, soft-compound rear tyre.

“I expected a little bit more, sincerely,ꦐ” Marini said.

“At the beginning I was not so fast, I couldn’t use the extra grip of the rear tyre to make the lap time at the beginning so I lost a lot of time in the first two laps. But then my pace was okay, nothing special but I wou👍ld say okay.”

Track conditions had improved compared to Friday, Mar༺ini felt, but were still worse than 💮in May’s Catalan Grand Prix. That he was able to match his lap times from May indicated that Marini and Honda have taken a step forward over the past six months.

“[The track was] a little bit ꧑better,” Marini said, comparing the surface to Friday after Saturday’s Sprint.

“The lap time was not fantastic even this morning in qualifying. 🐷We were able to make the same lap time as the other ra🌄ce here, but the other riders no.

“So, this mea𝄹ns that our bike has improved for sure, but also that the track conditions ꦗwere a little bit more difficult than in May and this was not expected because also we had a softer rear tyre.

“But, an🐼yw🍌ay, for everybody the same, the track conditions, we just need to work better.”

Tyre choice remains a conundrum for Sunday. Marini said it’s “impossible” that the soft-compound rear tyre can last the full race distance: “It’s i𝐆mpossible. Even in the Sprint race it had two big drops and it was a disaster.”

That leaves a medium-compound rear tyreও and a hard-compound rear tyre, choosing between which will depend on the💙 temperature when the riders line up on the grid ahead of the warm-up lap for Sunday’s Grand Prix.

“At the moment it’s a little b꧙it difficult to say for sure between the medium [compound rear tyre] and the hard [compound rear tyre],” Marini said.

“⛎It will depend on thꦑe temperature. If it will be cold, maybe a little bit colder than today, for sure the medium [compound] rear will be the best choice; if it will be a little bit more hot, the hard [compound rear tyre] will be better in my opinion.

“And the hard [compound] ☂front ♉is a very good tyre, so the riders not using the hard [compound] front I don’t understand.”