Mir haunted by bad luck
Adapting a famous saying, one could write that in a person’s life there are certainly only taxes, death and…Joan Mir’s retirement. The first race of the 2026 season for the Honda centaur began in fact as last year’s had ended too many times: with a retirement. In this case the early stop was not due to a fall of the 2020 world champion, but to a unspecified technical problem which forced him to park his bike on the side of the track while he was in full battle with Fabio Di Giannantonio for sixth position.
HRC did not receive any detailed explanation of what happened, other than that the problem depended on the breaking of aexternal component“. “It’s a real shame what happened – commented Mir at the end of the race – I was having a lot of fun, I was driving well and doing some fantastic overtaking. Then something happened that we couldn’t control and our race was over. We need to verify carefully what happened. We need to focus on the positive aspects of this race weekend and bring them to Brazil. Usually on new circuits we are strong, I think I learn quickly, so we will try to exploit this advantage. By focusing on the positives, we demonstrated our speed and the progress made by Honda“.
Marini in the top 10
HRC took care of bringing points to the factory team Luca Marinitransited in tenth position under the checkered flagafter having benefited from some retreats before him: “I think the race was tough for everyone – commented Honda’s #10 – not so much for the temperature and from a physical point of view, because that’s why we train, but because we really had to manage everything on the bike to get to the end. After four laps we were no longer able to brake as we would have liked, which made the race very long, as that is normally our strong point. I started very well, but then lost three positions on the straight shortly after. Everyone from fifth to 14th has a very similar pace, so if you make a mistake in qualifying or at the start of the race, it takes you a long time to recover. But it was a good way to start the year, we learned a lot and we know what we have to do now.”.
