Taka Nakagami finishes as top Honda with 8th at the #ItalianGP

Takaaki Nakagami finished as the leading Honda bike in the Italian Grand Prix as he continued his impressive recent form at Mugello. The LCR Honda IDEMITSU rider claimed 8th position in Sunday’s MotoGP race, fighting back in the latter stages to secure a third consecutive top-10 result after his seventh places in France and Jerez.

The Japanese rider showed his traditional pace in warm-up as he was fifth fastest and then made a solid start to the race as he maintained his position having started from the third row. He lost some ground over the opening laps, dropping back to 12th, but finished strongly, passing Marc Marquez and polesitter Fabio Di Giannantonio amongst others to take eighth behind the leading pack.

Takaaki Nakagami – 8th

It was a really tough race, especially at the beginning when it was difficult to find good speed and I lost a couple of positions. I dropped to P12, but then in the second part of the race I overtook Marc (Marquez), Di Giannantonio and Oliveira. Those two laps in a row were really good riding and at the end we were able to finish P8, so another top-10. Top Honda is a really good result for us, but we still need to improve the bike performance. Let’s see what we can do at the next race at Montmelo.