Joan Mir looked to make the most of a dry race day in Le Mans, once again fighting for top Honda honours with Luca Marini salvaging tenth from a complicated weekend.
Joan Mir looked to make the most of a dry race day in Le Mans, once again fighting for top Honda honours with Luca Marini salvaging tenth from a complicated weekend.
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Sunday, 10th May 2026 |
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| French Grand Prix, Le Mans |
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Tenth in trying French GP for Marini, Mir crashes while chasing top five |
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| Joan Mir looked to make the most of a dry race day in Le Mans, once again fighting for top Honda honours with Luca Marini salvaging tenth from a complicated weekend. |
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With cooler temperatures predicted and the threat of rain always on the horizon as the MotoGP World Championship field lined up on the grid, Luca Marini elected to run the soft front tyre. This choice allowed the #10 to make up a handful of positions off the start, but as the ambient temperatures increased the Italian switched to conservation mode as his tyre life began to fade. Despite lacking front stability, Marini still pushed until the very end to catch Aldeguer for ninth place and ended the 27-lap race just 0.1s back.
Tenth place moves Marini to 33 World Championship points, six behind Bastianini and the top ten overall.
Starting from sixth on the grid, Joan Mir immediately made his presence known as he put pressure on the front runners. Resuming his race-long battle with the likes of Quartararo from Saturday, the #36 stayed locked into the battle for the top five as he traded places with the home hero and Ogura for multiple laps. Biding his time, Mir kept the pressure on Quartararo and slipped past into sixth with eight laps remaining. Unfortunately, a heavy fall would follow on the next lap, ending Mir’s race and resulting in a laceration which required stitches to his right hand at the circuit medical centre.
Now barely a few days rest between the French and the Catalan GP, Round 6 starting at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Friday, May 15.
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| Luca Marini 10 |
| Honda HRC Castrol |
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“A big pity today, my front tyre choice was the wrong one – who was expecting the sun in the race?! It was difficult to arrive at the end because there was a lot of movement by the end, on the other hand with the hard at the start of the race was on the limit because it was cold before the sun arrived. It’s positive that we finished tenth and still got some points after a weekend with ups and downs, but it’s not what we want anymore. There’s work to be done and in this race, we struggled more with race pace than other rounds this year.”
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| Joan Mir 36 |
| Honda HRC Castrol |
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“Not the way we wanted to finish a really strong weekend for us because I think a top five result was there at the end. It was a crash I was not expecting. I had the hard front, able to stay behind Fabio safely, but when I passed him I had to be very aggressive to keep heat in the tyre. Under straight braking I lost the front early and I suffered a very hard crash, and I leave with a couple of stitches in my hand. Overall I am OK which is the most important thing.”
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