Sixth-fastest at the end of Practice at the Portuguese MotoGP confirmed a step forward for Johann Zarco that he felt already in Asia.<\/p>\n
Zarco was able to be fast from the beginning of Friday in Portugal, ultimately ending as the second-fastest Honda behind Joan Mir<\/a>, but comfortably inside the top-10 and only a-quarter-of-a-second away from the top of the times.<\/p>\n \u201cPretty pleased with how it went,\u201d Johann Zarco<\/a> summarised, speaking to MotoGP.com after Practice at Portimao.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the first laps of FP1 I was fast and this brings a good confidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA good confirmation from Malaysia that I got this confidence back on the bike, so it means that I can push on it and try to do the lap time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cSo, happy to get it, now I want to improve my pace, feel even better on the bike to keep the pace and get the chance of a podium for the races. So, let\u2019s see tomorrow.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo happy to be straight in Q2. If I have an opportunity to catch the first row I guess from there I will have a chance to smell the podium.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Zarco started the season well \u2013 fourth in Argentina, then winning in the rain in France, and second in Britain \u2013 his form dipped mid-season.<\/p>\n The recovery in the last two races has been well-timed, the LCR Honda<\/a> rider says, to avoid entering the MotoGP <\/a>off-season with negativity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty important to find the confidence back again because if you finish the season being scared to crash I think you can bring a lot of doubts during the winter, even if the winter is pretty short now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019m happy for that. In Malaysia it was already a good step and it\u2019s good to come back in Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe feel that we are doing many races, so I think we all feel that we want to finish the season. But [to] at least get this pleasure, to feel positive, is always important for a rider.\u201d<\/p>\n Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sixth-fastest at the end of Practice at the Portuguese MotoGP confirmed a step forward for Johann Zarco that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,15612,15613,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-269592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-johann-zarco","tag-lcr-honda","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}