\u201cWe got through the first lap and were still together in the group. I had already overtaken Moreira and I was able to pass Marini; things were going pretty well.\u201d Zarco <\/a>told Canal+.<\/p>\n \u201cBastianini seemed to be struggling a bit with the fuel tank. Fernandez passed him into Turn 8. Bastianini moved aside and I tried to follow, thinking we’d change direction parallel to each other.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t trying to overtake at that point, [but] I had to go in knowing we needed to change direction.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cHe tried to come back, we made contact and I fell in Turn 9. It was a racing incident, I don\u2019t complain, these things happen.<\/p>\n \u201cThe race was lost, but I tried to restart the bike because I thought, like in Moto2, there might be a red flag.\u201d<\/p>\n That never came, but with the pressure off, Zarco \u2018played around\u2019 with traction and power – and set the second fastest lap time of the grand prix.<\/p>\n \u201cI tried to get a feel for a track I struggle with. I told myself, \u2018enjoy yourself, it\u2019s a great track, you\u2019re on a great bike.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were some interesting things because it\u2019s still a job for the engineers to try and find traction and power, and I played around with that a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n US MotoGP Lap Times: Hondas plus Marco Bezzecchi.<\/p>\n \u00a9\u00a0Peter McLaren<\/p>\n \u201cA sign that it can be done\u201d<\/p>\n On lap 10, Zarco set his scorching best lap time of 2m2.073s.<\/p>\n That was faster than any lap by race winner Marco Bezzecchi <\/a>and second only to the 2m2.037s new lap record by another Aprilia rider, Ai Ogura<\/a>. The fastest lap by any other Honda rider was almost 0.4s slower.<\/p>\n Zarco\u2019s time is given as \u2018valid\u2019 in the official results, meaning no cancellation due to track limits.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Frenchman was over a minute and a half behind the next closest rider, and had not been lapped at that stage, ruling out a fortuitous slipstream.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Zarco matched his best top speed of the race when setting the lap time, but was still the slowest of any Honda rider at 338.0km\/h.<\/p>\n The Frenchman said the head-turning lap served as “a sign”, even if he couldn\u2019t come close to repeating it, with a next best over half a second slower.<\/p>\n \u201cI did a 2m2.00s at a point in the race where you think the others weren\u2019t going any faster, and I haven\u2019t been able to repeat it,\u201d he confirmed.<\/p>\n \u201cIn any case, it\u2019s a sign that it can be done. Then you have to understand how to do it and do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n Once beyond the two-thirds restart distance, and with points still well out of reach, the Frenchman retired from last place with two laps to go.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Luca Marini finished as the top Honda rider, in ninth.<\/p>\n Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johann Zarco\u2019s US MotoGP hopes ended in an early tangle with Enea Bastianini, before producing one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,3554,245659,9398,15612,15613,9399,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-581199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-diogo-moreira","11":"tag-honda-hrc-motogp","12":"tag-joan-mir","13":"tag-johann-zarco","14":"tag-lcr-honda","15":"tag-luca-marini","16":"tag-motor","17":"tag-motor-sports","18":"tag-motosport","19":"tag-motosports","20":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581199","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=581199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"US](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/hondas-plus-bezzecchi.png\")
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