HOW DID IT COME TO THIS?
Overreliance on Marquez
Honda’s dramatic turn for the worse coincided with Marquez entering his own personal hell. Injuries ravaged the eight-time World Champ for three years, as he raced at just 50% of the 52 GPs from 2020-2022.
As LCR Honda Team Manager Lucio Cecchinello explains: “It didn’t help that Marc had a serious injury. He’s not only a great rider; but he was a great leader inside Honda. Honda has a lot of consideration for him. They kept waiting to hear his comments on which direction they should go.”
It seems engineers felt Marquez simply returning would elevate their fortunes and LCR’s Technical Director Christophe Bourguignon admits as much: “We had Marc covering the weakness of the bike. Probably they were waiting for him and thinking all would be beautiful when he did.”
The pandemic years
The effect of Covid 19 can’t be overstated. “They just had a couple of engineers going around race tracks, sending emails and data back to Japan,” said Cecchinello of that time. Unfortunately for Honda, this coincided with Ducati, Aprilia and KTM upping the stakes in MotoGP. At certain tracks, race records were demolished by ten seconds or more. And Honda were slow to react to their rivals’ gains.
“Probably the development department inside HRC, without seeing with their own eyes what was going on at the race track and how the competitors were moving forward, applying unconventional new technologies… played an important role in our bike development,” admitted Cecchinello. But it wasn’t just the bikes that were changing; the off-track approach was, too.
As Bourguignon states: “In those years the European manufacturers started hiring technicians from other manufacturers and having their own aero department, wind tunnel, things like this. Aprilia had all these F1 people coming in.” Honda didn’t keep up.
Outdated processes Questions over the organisation of Honda’s MotoGP project were brought into focus at the start of 2022, when confusion meant Honda test rider Stefan Bradl’s kit didn’t turn up in time for the Sepang Shakedown.
So perplexed were engineers at the RC213V’s behaviour at the start of 2023, they asked Marquez to ride without any aerodynamics at the Sepang test.
Rins firstly grew dissatisfied at not receiving the latest parts in LCR, then how his wishes went unheeded. By June he’d decided to leave. Overall, Honda’s approach seemed stale compared to the European manufacturers.
So why not look elsewhere for brainpower? Team Manager Alberto Puig tried, as he sought to bring in aerodynamics engineers from Ducati. Yet this was rejected by Honda’s top brass.
‘We had Marc covering the weakness’