Honda could pull off a major surprise in this weekend's Barcelona Grand Prix and end a nightmare 2024 season on a high, based on the pace shown by Johann Zarco on Friday.
The LCR rider dragged his Honda RC213V to a strong fourth place in second practice at Barcelona, less than three tenths behind the factory Ducati of two-time champion Francesco Bagnaia.
A slipstream from a number of faster bikes in the final sector played a big role in Zarco posting a time of 1m39.147s, but the fact that a Honda was classified ahead of the Ducati GP24s of Jorge Martin and Enea Bastianini was no mean feat.
It prompted Zarco to target a spot on the first two rows of the grid in Saturday's qualifying, before adding that achieving that feat would be nothing short of magical for the beleaguered Japanese marque.
Honda, after all, has struggled to get into Q2 for the majority of the year, so for Zarco to gain an automatic entry to the final part of qualifying means it has a chance to mix with the big boys on the grid.
In the first 19 events of the year, Honda qualified inside the top 10 only three times, each time courtesy of newcomer Zarco. Despite racing for the satellite LCR team, the veteran racer has consistently outperformed his factory counterparts all year, scoring more points than Joan Mir and Luca Marini combined.
The 34-year-old hailed his late FP2 effort as one of the best of the year, but felt he left more time on the table by making small errors on his next flying lap.
"It can be [regarded as] one of the best laps," he said. "I think Thailand was a good lap also behind Marc [Marquez] and another one in Aragon.
"But yes overall to get already a good lap before the end [of the session] was great, then on the last tyre I think the potential was clear to do some tenths better but a few mistakes have been done.
"So I could not improve but it's positive for tomorrow. But I'm very happy how the practice went in the afternoon and I hope I can keep going like that.
"It seems there is an opportunity for the first two rows which will be magic for tomorrow. Then when the tyre gets used [in the race] we have a big change of the bike behaviour.
"I don't know if we will have a solution for tomorrow but at least get the speed and then try to control."
Although Honda appeared to make little progress in the first half of the season due to a lack of developments on the bike, a clear uptrend can be seen since the middle part of August.
Zarco finished a race inside the top 10 twice during the Asian leg of the campaign, securing a best result of eighth in Thailand.
Factory Honda rider Marini praised Zarco for the lap he put in at Barcelona and believes his Q2 entry shows that Honda is on the right track to recovery.
"Johann went very fast, he set a monstrous time and the progress we have made on the bike, the developments we have brought, are working," he said.
"It's nice to show that here as well. Zarco was good to be perfect with the settings with the tyre already today, so good, but I'm very happy with the work we've done with Honda because last weekend in practice we were the last five bikes and now we're scattered all over the place and there's one in Q2."
Marini and Mir finished 16th and 18th respectively on the factory Hondas in practice, while Takaaki Nakagami ended up 14th on the other LCR bike.
Explaining where Zarco has been gaining time, Marini said: "Johann is very good at turning the bike in the middle of the corner right now, he has a lot of movement with the throttle, to get it going straight away.
"And then he has always been a master of corner exit and right now corner exit is maybe the weak point of the Honda, so he can bring his characteristics into play to bring good potential.
"It seems to me that on the exit he has more traction even than the Ducatis, which from the back he was riding above Marquez."
Both Zarco and Nakagami were able to outpace Yamaha duo Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins, who ended up 13th and 13th and half a second slower than Zarco.
Yamaha has been the more proactive of the Japanese manufacturers in introducing updates this year and also appeared to make a bigger jump in performance compared to its direct rival in recent races.
However, Rins revealed that he had previously his bosses at Yamaha about the progress Honda has made in improving the mechanical grip of the RC213V in recent races.
"It's not the first time that we can see the Honda a little bit better than the Yamaha," he said.
"It's true that since some races I already say to the team that they have better grip than us, better mechanical grip. And on tracks like this where the grip is very low, it looks like they have an advantage compared to us."
