Much of the focus at Honda has been on Marc Marquez and now Alex Rins this season. But one rider has been quitely scoring points for the marque on its difficult to ride and crash-prone RC213V: MotoGP
Ironically, the Honda rider with the most points in 2023 and the only one with a victory to his credit has felt so spurned by the marque that he has elected to quit a two-year contract to join Yamaha – a brand not exactly enjoying any better success right now.
“And then, if everything goes well, the next step is to deliver to the satellite team. But, once again, Marc was not fit and Joan had too many crashes, he got injured and he missed many races in his first year at Honda. So, he [Rins] doesn’t have any experience of Honda’s bike. So, unfortunately, they changed the strategy. If all the riders were 100% and there were less crashes, it’s easy to deliver more and collect the data. But since 2022 it was not like this.
“The worst moment was in Sachsenring, I was the only Honda rider on the grid,” Nakagami recalls. “So, I couldn’t make any mistakes because otherwise there would be no Hondas on the track. So, at that moment I tried to take a step back and think about not only myself but to think about my team, Honda, to at least finish the race otherwise it’s a big disaster.
Nakagami’s British GP was a literally pointless affair, and the new aero package isn’t going to be the definitive way out of the mess, he noted. Every little helps, but Nakagami feels Honda could start to explore bigger changes from sprint to grand prix. Two things have conspired to strengthen Nakagami’s position for 2024. Injury at the start of the year forced Ogura to miss two rounds, but since then he has only scored one podium compared to the five – including a victory – he registered at the same stage in 2022.
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