HONDA GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
Apart from the colour scheme, it’s all-new at Honda. New brakes: Brembo out, Nissin in. New suspension: Öhlins out, Showa in. And did we mention two new riders? Bautista returns to Ducati, Haslam to BSB. In their places are fresh-faced Spaniards, Iker Lecuona and Xavi Vierge. There’s one slight hitch, though: neither of them have superbike experience.
The fact the Iberian duo have no superbike track record isn’t necessarily bad. They can learn the nature of a superbike (a much softer-sprung machine from the stiff, prototype GP specimens they’re accustomed to) by adopting HRC’s rigorous principles right from the beginning. They have no idea what the bike felt like in its previous guise, so there’s no having to adapt in the way Scott Redding is after moving from Ducati’s V4 engine to the straight-four of BMW.
According to both men, who are mentored by Team Principal Leon Camier, the main challenge isn’t anything technical. It’s the fact they have three races per weekend. That’s three times the debriefs, three times the loss of fluid and building the body back up, three times the rush to the first corner and three times the pre-race psychological struggle to contend with.
Pirelli tyres are another novelty. For Vierge, he’s also adapting to a motorcycle with advanced electronics – compared to what little he had to play with in Moto2. Lecuona used electronics in MotoGP but that is a standardised control unit for every bike, whereas WSB features different systems and every team has a very different philosophy. Winter testing featured injuries for both. Lecuona broke a finger in Jerez just before Christmas while Vierge fractured a rib in Barcelona two weeks ago.
It always would be an uphill challenge, even before tackling the hills of Aragon. In their own words, we shouldn’t expect podiums in the first half of the season.
‘Neither rider has superbike experience’