Honda makes Marquez despair: “He doesn’t want to leave, but he has to think about it” | Motorcycles | sports

Marc Marquez never thought he should think about his future with Honda. The Cervera rider always wanted to retire dressed in the brand’s gold-wing colors, writing his MotoGP World Championship legend – 6 titles and 59 victories, to sum it up in two facts -. Despite the factory’s disastrous situation, unable to give him a winning bike, the Catalan reiterated that his “Plan A” was to continue with it. His contract expires in 2024. He repeated before competing at the Sachsenring, his own Roland Garros team, as Paris with Rafa Nadal. But the relationship between the champion and Japan hit rock bottom last Sunday. Inside the team, they understood his resignation from Sunday’s race in Germany, where he won 11 times in 11 starts, as a heads-up to the factory.

The many meetings that took place for months and even years with the top managers of the Japanese giant are no longer useful now that it has undergone four operations on the humerus bone since 2020, which is an ordeal. He knows he’s here to win, but he just doesn’t have the guns and time is running out at the age of 30. And they say from those around him: “He does not want to leave, but he is forced to think about it.” The five falls at the German Grand Prix (it equaled his record for bumps in a weekend: Montmelo, 2017) was a blow to him and his entire body of work. “We knew we were wrong, but not that bad,” one of the team members sums up. On the German track, eight Ducati’s – all on the grid – slid into the top nine bikes at the finish line. However, Honda and Yamaha, embroiled in a similar crisis, left most of the massive data behind. Sunday’s race was the first since 1969 without a Japanese machine in the top ten.

“It’s a matter of mentality, and it’s no coincidence that it’s Asian brands that suffer in this way,” says another voice with three decades of experience with the team. The Japanese part of the equation, the majority, doesn’t listen enough to the European voices: “There’s too much pride and it’s too slow.” They know within the working group in the ring that they are not providing enough weapons for their pilots, and they repeat the sayings of the last times. “The level in MotoGP is very high at the moment, and everything is very tight,” Repsol Honda Technical Director Ken Kawauchi noted in a chat with EL PAÍS ahead of the date in Germany. “Less than a second separates the entire network, and we continue to work on the search for consistent and continuous improvements.”

Marquis’ despair is shared. lex Rins (LCR-Honda) saw his Sachsenring resign from hospital with a broken tibia and fibula; His partner, Takaaki Nakagami, announces that he got scared after seeing the accident that sent Mark, the Brand Standard, home; Joan Mir also followed home with a right hand injury and in a year in which he tied his worst fall record in MotoGP at just six races (12, same as Marquez). The status of the 2020 champion, the Catalan’s new partner in the official team, demonstrates the decisive behavior of the Japanese machine. “They’ve never had mediocre riders, now they have three of the best on the grid and a brutal team behind them, and ten on human level,” confirms Mallorcan agent Paco Sanchez. “Now, not even Mark can cover up the bike’s lack of competitiveness,” he adds. The most troubling issue is that the bike is dangerous, a physical shredder.

From Honda they realize that this is not the fault of the pilots and do not doubt that the Marquez have the best assets in the World Cup. They want to take care of him and understand the doubts that the motorcycle generates on a mental level, and the latent frustration his brother Alex recognized in him. The voices consulted by this newspaper urge the manufacturer to make important decisions at the organizational level and in key areas such as aerodynamics, engine and electronics, where the Italians have years of advantage. At the upcoming Grand Prix in Holland, they don’t expect major changes.

Kawauchi, who arrived in January from a Suzuki — the Japanese factory’s third in the world championships until last year, picked up the trash and packed their bags — admitted they were “still getting to know each other” within the team, another sign of the phlegmatic Japanese getting things done. Despite everything, he is confident that he can progress after the July break. Honda can fight for the wins. There are four strong pilots and improvements will come. We saw Álex win in Austin, so the potential is there,” he concludes. If they don’t get to it, they could lose Marquez along the way.