Luca Marini: “If you look back, it's unbelievable”

Luca Marini’s seventh-place finish in the San Marino MotoGP left him “not fully satisfied”.

“If the start was good and put me in fourth or fifth position, I could have finished the race there," he lamented.

That's an “incredible” step from his debut Honda season, where Marini didn’t even score a point on track - his 15th at Sachsenring being achieved after promotion due a tyre pressure penalty - until the same San Marino home round.

The poor results even prompted rumours that Marini might seek an early Honda exit. 

That was angrily denied by the Italian, who went on to score just 14 points and a best finish of twelfth last year, leaving him 22nd and last of the full-time riders.

This year's transformation has seen Marini score 94 points, a best result of fourth and holding twelfth in the standings, despite missing three rounds due to injury.

“We have to be super satisfied and happy, because if you look back, it's unbelievable now, the level that we could reach in just one year,” Marini reflected.

“So we need to keep pushing and looking for the next results, which can be even better.

“But let's see race by race. Now we go to Japan, that is an important race for Honda and for me.” 

"I liked the new bike"

Before Motegi, Marini was eleventh fastest (+0.6s) during the Misano post-race test, where he helped Honda’s preparations for 2026.

“Today we focused a lot on the bike for next year,” he revealed. “We felt some improvement, we found something positive, and I liked to ride the new bike.

“Still it’s not faster at the moment, but there is more potential.

“Then in the afternoon, we tried to focus more on what we can do from now until the end of the season, with parts that we already have on the bike.

“So it was a positive day and a very good job from everybody in the garage.”

Rear aero was among the items Marini worked on for the remaining six rounds of this season.

“The different tail gives us more downforce, but it’s always important to balance the downforce of the wings, front and the rear, to have good turning and good stability,” he explained.

“At a certain moment, we had the bike full of wings, and it was so stable in Turns 11, 12 and 13 that I said every lap I could enter faster and faster and faster, but then I started to struggle a little bit to find the turning.

“So we tried to go back a little bit and found a better compromise.”

Team-mate Joan Mir missed the test due to his neck injury from Friday.