Luca Marini’s 2024 season was very different to his 2023. He replaced Marc Márquez in the factory Honda squad, when the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer was at its lowest ebb, going without a single podium finish for the first time since its fabulous but ill-fated oval-piston NR500 of the early 1980s.

Thus Marini’s job changed, from chasing podiums to helping redevelop the RC213V, trying to transform it from an old-school MotoGP bike into a kind of Formula 1 car on two wheels, like Ducati’s Desmosedici.

The 27-year-old Italian and team-mate Joan Mir finished last season 23rd and 22nd overall, because the RC213V was the worst bike on the grid.

Things are different now. Lessons were learned last season and finally Honda is back on track, currently running second in the race for the constructors’ prize.

How much has Marini played in this turnaround? Impossible to say, of course, but he does go about his job differently from some other Honda riders. Last year he started 39 races and finished 35, while Mir started 38 races and finished 23.

This is a different type of approach: some riders keep pushing against and past the limit with inevitable consequences. This may occasionally bring home a good result, but when riders fail to go full distance they’re not gathering the best data and info.

Mat Oxley: This is your fifth season in MotoGP – would you call yourself a complete rider?

Luca Marini: It’s difficult to have an answer to this question. Maybe you are complete from the first day you ride a MotoGP bike because you’re a MotoGP rider. But a complete MotoGP rider? Never, not even on your last day on a MotoGP bike.

In 2023 you came within a few seconds of winning your first MotoGP race…

Two or three times it was super-close but it didn’t come, so we keep working and trying.

You went from riding one of the best bikes on the grid to one of the worst, so how did your mentality change, because now you are doing two different jobs – developing and racing?

It’s very different, especially because I was in a satellite team and now I’m in a factory team, so the job is completely different, during tests and also during GPs.

I think at the beginning there are a lot of positives – thinking that you are the right person to change everything to bring the bike back to victory, because I trust a lot in my capacity. But it’s also difficult because we have faced so many difficulties, so many key points that stayed the same for some years, with no big improvements.

It will cost a little more time but I’m super-happy about my decision to come to Honda, because I really trust in this project and I’d like to be a part of this family for a long time. We’ve had to wait a little but I’m sure that especially this year’s changes to the bike will give us a lot of results.

A lot of riders would struggle to keep focus in this situation…

This depends on your character. The most important thing for me is the opportunity to fight for the title. This may cost some more time but I know that the time will come when the Honda will be the best bike and I will be super-happy to try to win the title with this bike.

Some riders don’t enjoy testing, they just want to ride at the maximum, while others like to think, so do you enjoy this process?

Yes, it’s a part that gives me satisfaction, especially because you can ride the bike with no pressure or lap-time target, so you can just enjoy the moment on the bike. But I also know that testing is now different, because everybody wants to push — to fit new tyres to make a lap time. Even in testing there’s a lot of strategy to make a lap time at the correct moment, because then the press and the media will talk only about that lap time.

“We are so lucky to have this kind of feeling. Only a few of us in the world ride MotoGP bikes”

So it’s super-important but I enjoy the other part of the job, because I love to ride a MotoGP bike and I think this is the most important thing — just exit from the garage, exit from pitlane, make one-out lap, enjoying, then you have to push to make your best lap time. It’s an amazing feeling and we are so lucky to have this kind of feeling, because there’s only a few of us in the world that ride MotoGP bikes.

What’s the best thing about riding a MotoGP bike?

The gearbox is the first thing. After the winter when you’ve been training with your training bike (Marini uses a Panigale V4 R), the MotoGP gearbox is unbelievable – how you shift the gears and how the engine keeps pushing in every gear. The gearbox is super-smooth, it’s incredible. Also the power of the brakes and the torque of the bike is enough, at least for the first day of testing!

At the moment, Johann Zarco is the fastest Honda rider, so how does he make the difference?

I think his riding style is quite unique, he usually sacrifices corner entry, the braking part, to have a fantastic exit. He was the same on the Ducati. This helps him to solve some of the problems we’ve had in entry.

On my side, I like to brake deep and hard and enter the corner super-fast, but on the exit I sacrifice lap time, so especially with last year’s bike that wasn’t a good way to ride, so I often had to sacrifice my instinct to be more focused on the exit to make the lap time, because in corner entry we’ve had some struggles with the bike which didn’t let us enter as fast as we wanted.

Did the new-for-2024 rear tyre change everything?

Yes, everything. Apart from Ducati – it hasn’t affected Ducati.

Because the Ducati is a rear-biased bike, so the more grip it has, the faster it goes?

In my opinion they are just super-smart at the moment – super-clever, good engineers, good people, good methods.

How do you brake, using the rear tyre, because the front tyre isn’t so good?

Sincerely, I have to say the front Michelin isn’t that bad. [MotoGP riders who came from Dunlop Moto2 tyres always say the Michelin front is good.] They are doing a great job. People forgot that tyres are super-difficult – it’s a super-difficult job and we complain all the time because the tyres are the only things that touch the ground. But considering the stresses created by a modern MotoGP bike, I think the tyres are doing a pretty good job. For sure, next year we will have a better front. What’s true is that the Michelin rear is amazing, also historically. I remember when I raced in the Moto2 European championship the Michelin rear was also amazing.

Can you explain how you go into corners balancing the front and rear brakes?

Now the entry phase is super-important. This depends a lot on the corner and how much engine-brake you have and the setting of the bike.

OK, choose a corner…

OK, Turn 1 at Sepang. First of all, it’s important to understand the settings you have in the bike because just preparing for braking makes a difference to how you are going to brake, if you are going to use some lean angle during braking.

Last year we often saw [Jorge] Martin, making from left to right and then braking with some lean angle. This can help if you have a problem with stoppies. If you use a bit of lean angle the rear tyre slides, so the bike doesn’t make a stoppie. This is the first thing – approaching the corner.

Then I like to be smooth with the first touch of the front brake, a bit gentle with the first bite, because you don’t want to transfer the weight too quickly to the front. [Because that takes away load and therefore grip from the rear.]

After that first bite you try everything with your fingers on the front brake lever until you reach the limit of the bike. Depending on how much engine brake you have, it’s either better to use the rear brake from the very first moment, together with the front brake, or if the engine brake is good enough, you wait until the rear tyre comes back into line, then you start to release the front brake and use the rear brake. So it depends a lot on how you’ve set the engine brake.

Then you start to lean the bike more. Hopefully you’re on a good line into the corner. In the last instant it’s important to be on the limit of the front tyre – if you can feel the front tyre moving it means you’re on the limit of the tyre and you’re braking well.

Then you keep releasing the front brake until the last moment, while managing with the rear brake. It all depends on how much rear slide you have. If you have too much engine brake you have to release the rear brake. If the engine-brake setting is correct you keep using the rear brake because it helps the bike go inside the corner. It’s quite a lot, but eventually everything comes naturally.

So many different stages – how much does the rear tyre help the bike turn?

I think it’s very important to have a little bit of slide from the rear tyre to help the bike turn when the rear tyre come back into line.

So you just keep sliding with the rear, then when it comes back into line you release the brakes into the corner, so when you touch the gas the tyres are in line, so they won’t slide easily. The problem with the new rear tyre is this — when the rear tyre comes back from the slide it always pushes the front. This is the biggest difference with the new tyre — the last part isn’t easy because the tyre has too much grip.

Yes, last year we saw Martin and Pecco Bagnaia losing the front and crashing, especially in sprint races, when they were using the soft rear, with even more grip.

And now there are other complications during braking now, like locking the front tyre…

This depends on the bike — the Ducati especially has a lot of front locking. [The Desmosedici uses the rear tyre so well that it can take load, and therefore grip, away from the front tyre. Think Bagnaia’s crash at Misano last year.]

Another complication is keeping the front tyre in the right temperature/pressure window, so it’s not so high that you lose grip and not so low that you get penalised…

This is the most difficult part.

How do you keep the front tyre at the right temperature/pressure? Do you have the numbers on your dash, or what?

You can have whatever you like, but I don’t have the numbers, because I’d look at them all the time. I just have LED warning lights.

How do you deal with the temperature/pressure issue?

I think the procedure before the race is the key. In the race the rider must make his best performance, trying not to think so much about this. This is also the key. So the engineers in the garage, the crew chief and everybody else must do a very good job. Everything must be done in detail, so we see wheel rims with heat treatments and we see tyres inflated with special air.

I think all these things are super-important, because for the rider the key is just to focus on the race and try to do your best. And if you want to avoid high temperature you stay out of the slipstream of the bikes in front. You know when the pressure is too high because the tyre starts locking [on the brakes] and closing [tucking] on entry.

How do you cope with the front tyre locking? Brad Binder told me he just locks his arms during braking to stop the front tyre skidding left or right…

Yeah, you get used to it. It’s not something crazy. When you’re on the bike it’s OK because it happens every lap. Sometimes when the tyre locks too much or you feel the tyre moving too much, you have to release the front brake a bit, but this comes naturally. You just try to brake deeper and harder than the limit of the bike and then leave yourself to manage this kind of thing.

And then there’s the air-stop problem — when you are braking in the low-pressure area behind another bike, so you have no air pressure helping to stop the bike.

Yes, now this is a bigger topic.

How do you deal with that?

You just stay a metre or a metre and a half out of the slipstream and this makes the difference. The wings help MotoGP bikes stop, so that in many corners we are braking at the same place as Moto2 bikes, but we arrive at the brake point going 40km/h [25mph] faster. But yes, this is something you always have to take care about because it’s super-easy to get sucked in.

What does it feel like when you get sucked in?

You’re not stopping. You keep braking but nothing is happening.

That must be pretty scary?

Sometimes, yes.