As the second and final day of testing in Buriram drew to a close, Johann Zarco began to draw conclusions about the work done by Honda in Thailand and the situation ahead of the first race of the season.
An all in all positive balance drawn by the LCR team's French rider, who is convinced that he can start the season by having a good round at Chang International Circuit.
"This morning I tried to improve the lap time I did yesterday and I managed to do it but not as much as I expected because we were still trying things to finish the test and give as much information as possible to the engineers.
Now I have better control of the bike and I have better knowledge of the bike, so I think I will be more performance oriented when needed. The race pace is the area where maybe we can still struggle.
I'll see how to manage it on race weekend, but now I have better opportunities to go directly into Q2 and even improve qualifying than I did last year.
And that will be the first opportunity to try to improve the race result as well," said Johann, talking about the work done in these last preseason tests.
"This is a particular track and also for this reason it was good to come here, to try to understand things with a different rear tire and a different behavior of the bike.
I am a little tired, because I did so many laps and tried many things, but I am happy for the fact that we were able to try everything that Honda had planned in December and January.
I think they will try to extract the best from here for the next evolution," the Frenchman continued, "We didn't try something that made us draw breath and exclaim, 'yes, this is it!' without any doubt.
We had to reconfirm many times what we were testing, to be sure and make the right decision to start the season.
Now I think we have a clearer picture of the situation, and I will recover as much energy as possible during my week off to be performing well in the race weekend, because I believe I can do well. We can face the first weekend with satisfaction."
Was it the sum of many small elements that allowed Honda to find the way forward, or was it one small improvement among the many things tried in testing that pointed the Japanese team in the right direction?
"The engineers can answer that better than I can, because I was very focused on my riding, the sensations and the answers I could give them," Zarco replied, "I didn't want to know too much about what we put on the bike, because if I knew everything we were trying I would be lost, since we have so many things to try.
Everything was well organized and I let the engineer organize everything, trying to behave the best I could on the bike to give clear information, because we always have to take into account the fact that what the rider does on the bike can be different between one exit and another, because the tires wear out and so on.
So my mission was to not make a mistake with the information by doing something different. Through small elements, I think we were able to get a better bike at least to be able to make a time attack and improve the lap time. This is already a step forward."
Despite the many parts to test, the two-time Moto2 champion does not want to forgo carrying out ing a race simulation.
"We will do it in the afternoon to get some information about the 27 laps. Considering my current condition, I know it won't be a real race simulation because I can't put as much energy into it as I can invest in the real race.
But it's always useful to see how the bike behaves from lap one to lap 27," said the LCR rider, who would not comment on the Honda's performance in grip conditions different from those encountered in Sepang:
"It's hard to say if it behaves better, worse or if the performance is the same. I was focused on trying to push, so I didn't have much time to analyze everything. I think the grip level is always the same for all the bikes: if the grip is not good it is not good for everyone, whereas if there is good grip it is good for everyone. And when there is good grip it seems easier, although then the difference remains more or less the same."
The Frenchman then concluded by commenting on the influence exerted by Honda's new test team on the exchange of information between the track and the factory.
"I don't have enough gap yet to be able to say whether the way of working with the factory has changed, because, as I said, these days in the box I have only put on and taken off my helmet," he underlined, "I let the engineers do all the analysis because they know how to analyze better than the riders."
