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The HRC team's continued efforts are paying off, as seen this weekend at Magny-Cours, which was clearly the best round of the season so far for Honda. Constantly fighting for the Top 10 with teammate Iker Lecuona, Xavi Vierge in fact gave the Japanese manufacturer three respectable performances at the French track. Even getting into the fight for the podium in the very first laps of Race 2.
"Actually, we've improved a lot already in the last Rounds, but unfortunately in Donington and Most I had a lot of problems because of the compartment syndrome and I couldn't demonstrate it," Vierge was quick to point out at the end of the weekend. "After being operated on, I had a solid weekend already in Portimao. After that we went to Estoril for a day of testing, where we made a small step forward again, and then we came here. This is not the best track for us, but I had pretty good feelings from the start and we took advantage of the difficult conditions we encountered to do a good qualifying in the wet."
Which is a key aspect in getting good results.
"Starting from the second row is mandatory to have good races in Superbike and yesterday we had a good chance to fight for the podium because I made the right choice with slicks. Unfortunately, however, the rain came and didn't give me a chance to fight for it - continued the Spaniard - Even today in the dry we were very close, so I'm very happy. We are figuring out how to get maximum performance from the bike and I hope to continue in this vein in the next races."
Work that focused on very specific areas.
"We only worked on the electronics and the set-up of the bike. From the outside it may look like the bike is very similar to last year's, but it's actually very different: it's completely new, even in terms of electronics, and we didn't have that much time to figure out the way forward," explained the 27-year-old. "At the beginning of the season we followed one that we thought was correct, but after a few Rounds we found out it was totally the opposite. At that point, we looked for a new base, also in terms of set-up and electronics, and step by step we managed to improve. Now we will go to Aragon for two more days of testing and I hope we will find a little bit more. At the beginning of the year it was really difficult to figure out how to make the bike perform, but now we seem to be going in the right direction."
Although the way forward now seems to be mapped out, it is still too early for the Catalan to start thinking about 2025.
"Right now we have to figure out where the limit is before we make any demands. Because as I said before, we found a new window after going in a wrong direction and now we have to reach the limit and then figure out in which area we have to improve," he acknowledged , "Right now we still have the usual problems we had, but they are much smaller than before."
Vierge then went into more details about the areas where there is still work to be done.
"One of the problems is grip," he admitted, "We need grip to stop the bike, corner and drive, and right now we can compensate with more angle in the first few laps with new tires, but we destroy the tires compared to the others, and that's exactly what happened today in Race 2, where I destroyed the tires in the last four laps and couldn't do anything more. Now, if nothing else, we are in the fray and can better understand the differences compared to the beginning of the season, when we were distant."
Could having a test team like BMW's give Honda a hand in progressing more quickly?
"Obviously," answered the HRC rider, "The teams have test teams in Europe and they are doing so many kilometers with different riders and in this way you can improve very quickly. I think that's one of the keys to being more performance oriented and making progress faster. Do we have plans in HRC? I can't say anything, but there are definitely things on the table and we are all pushing hard."
