On Track Off Road No.184

MOTOGP
BLOG
DON’T BE FOOLED...
More than Europe’s
largest MC store
It would be easy to assume that Honda are in a spot of
bother after the first test of 2019 at Sepang.
Of the four riders they have in
MotoGP, three are injured, Jorge
Lorenzo badly enough to be
forced to skip the test in Malaysia.
Of the other two, Marc Márquez
is still a long way off full fitness,
recovering from deeply invasive
shoulder surgery, and Cal Crutchlow
was riding around with a kilo
of metal in the foot he nearly
destroyed at Phillip Island. Only
Takaaki Nakagami was fully fit,
but he is not part of HRC’s development
programme.
The standings at the end of the
three-day test might even reinforce
that impression. LCR
Honda’s Crutchlow was the first
of the RC213V riders, in a reasonably
respectable sixth place.
Nakagami was the next Honda
rider, in ninth, nine tenths slower
than Danilo Petrucci’s quickest
lap. Marc Márquez got no further
than eleventh, a few hundredths
behind the Japanese LCR Honda
man. It was hardly the domination
we have seen in earlier years.
Is Honda really in as much trouble
as the Sepang test appears
to show? I rather suspect that
precisely the opposite is true.
Given just how close the field was
– twelve riders within a second
by the end of three days – the
relative rankings should be taken
with a pinch of salt. It is always
tempting to read too much into
the fastest lap times, and the
injuries of the Honda riders make
those times even more deceptive.
Injuries make riders less willing
to push right to the very limit at a
test, but that doesn’t mean they
aren’t providing useful feedback.
The trick is to focus on what you
are in a position to test, leaving
the rest for later.
In Marc Márquez’ case, that
meant not worrying about the
tendency of the front end to fold
under extreme pressure, and
concentrate on improving rear
grip and acceleration. “This test I
wasn’t concentrating on the front,
as I wasn’t pushing like always,”
he said at Sepang. “I’m not riding
with my normal riding style on
corner entry. We tried the engine,
then we tried a completely different
character of the bike. We
are not going into the details at
the moment, we are just going for
very big things, if it’s working or
not working, and get some information.
The most important thing
is to work on the engine, because
from Qatar until the end of the
season, we cannot touch it.”
It was top speed Honda are
chasing, the one area where they
really came up short against
the Ducati. This is a question of
honour: they are not called Honda
MOTOR Company for nothing.
But the trick is to balance top end
speed with manageable acceleration,
the quicker and more easily
you can get out of the corner, the
faster you go at the end of the
straight. At Sepang, the Hondas
were consistently within a couple
of km/h of the Ducati, their work
over the winter having paid off.