Marini fortifies best Honda weekend with double top five

Strength to strength for Luca Marini who backed up his best Honda Sprint result with his best Honda Grand Prix result to date. Recovering from early drama and fighting through to fifth, Marini leaves Hungary in fine form as Joan Mir’s weekend ends early.

With another lightning start, Luca Marini immediately found himself in podium contention as the 26-lap Hungarian GP began. But a flurry of incidents around him, including Bastianini sliding into the middle of the circuit, forced the Italian to stand up his Honda RC213V to avoid the multiple potential contacts. Sixth when the dust had settled, Marini remained there just behind reigning World Champion Jorge Martin for the majority of the race. The final laps saw the #10 lock horns with Franco Morbidelli, the smooth handling Honda getting the better of the Ducati and earning Marini fifth place. Improving on his best from Germany this year, this marks Marini’s sixth top-ten of the season.

Fourth in the Sprint and fifth in the Grand Prix, Hungary ends as the best weekend to date for Marini aboard the Honda RC213V and the first time a Honda HRC Castrol rider has achieved two top five results since the Sprint format was introduced. The results have Marini 13th in the World Championship with 72 points, also moving the Honda HRC Castrol team ahead of LCR in the Team standings.

Joan Mir’s race was complicated from the very start as the #36 found himself in the midst of the melee that was Turn 1. Losing early ground, he rallied to try and catch the group fighting for points but would fall on early in the race, pushing too hard and losing the front. Unharmed, he attempted to remount but was forced to return to the garage. Despite the unfortunate finish, Mir was able to once again regularly place himself in the top six and help further accelerate Honda’s return.

The pattern of 2025 continues, the MotoGP World Championship heading into a week off before Barcelona and Misano arrive as back-to-back races. Misano gives a final in-season test of 2025 before heading for four races across Asia and Oceania.

Luca Marini: “It’s a great weekend, an incredible feeling to end the race in fifth after chasing Martin and Morbidelli for all of the race. There were a couple of tricky moments during the race but we were able to recover from those. I am keeping my feet on the ground, but we are in a positive trend of improvements across all of Honda which is the key point. There have been a couple of races where we have also been strong when there is a lot of grip but there’s a lot of margin to improve. We have been trying many things these last two races, at two really unique tracks, now we need to focus on finding which are the best pieces overall. Barcelona will be another challenge with high top speed and different grip.”

Joan Mir: “We need to check what happened in the race because from the out lap, something from the rear of the bike was not feeling correct. Because of this, everything at the start was even more complicated for me which is a shame because we had a good opportunity. The potential of the bike now is inside the top six or seven and Luca showed that to end a great weekend for him. I am disappointed but overall it’s a positive weekend for us.”

credit: Honda Racing Corporation