After nine rounds of the 2023 MotoGP season, Honda’s haul of points in the constructors’ championship – in which only the leading rider from each brand contributes – is 89. Of that 89, 27 of those have been scored by LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami. Alex Rins has contributed the most at 47 and Marc Marquez the final 15.
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.
Rins’ core frustrations stem from the fact Honda has not used him enough for development and given him new items. Nakagami can understand his unhappiness but notes that – with Marquez and Joan Mir constantly injured in the first half of the season – Rins didn’t have enough experience with the RC213V to be relied on.
“I understand that all the manufacturers are not just looking at their factory teams, of course, but Honda looks like it’s a bit more focused on the factory team,” Nakagami tells Autosport in a chat at the British Grand Prix about Honda’s difficult campaign.
“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. So, it’s a little bit… they are missing a development [direction], they don’t know the priority of the team or riders. It’s really difficult to understand.”
As such, Honda has turned to Nakagami to help further development. At Silverstone, HRC homologated a new fairing for the LCR rider for him to start gathering data on. Having been a Honda rider since 2018, his experience will count for something in this respect. But, moreover, Nakagami has been the one Honda rider this year to understand the limit of the bike a bit better.
Source: Autosport