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As already happened last year, Honda ended 2023 propping up the MotoGP table. It finished with an embarrassing gap from Ducati with only 185 points scored, compared to 700 for the world champion brand. A glaring performance gap that stands out even more clearly if you consider that the Japanese giant only won one GP and was on the podium on just two occasions, always with Marquez.
Not having found the key to the problem between one absence and another of the Cervera rider, added to super fierce competition made up mostly of the Borgo Panigale team, Aprilia and KTM, who proved to be on another planet, heavily influenced the outcome of the championship for HRC. Team manager Alberto Puig is well aware of this and, speaking to the MotoGP.com website, admitted a certain frustration with results that never arrived.
"It cannot be very good, we obviously didn’t have a year to remember. We never found the way - he commented - We started very well in Portugal with Marc's pole position, but then the crash and the injuries, and then Joan Mir trying to understand the bike but a lot of ups and downs. We had some good results in India and Japan where Marc could get a podium but from a team point of view, this was not a good year for us."
The constant progress of its rivals and its own difficulty in finding a competitive level inevitably marked the path of the Repsol team. "We did not really make the step that is needed today in this class. Our competitors made a really big step and though we are making steps and trying to understand our weak points, but still we could not achieve our target. The competitiveness of the bike is not there and this we know. The will to change and try to make a different approach is there."
Not everything is lost, however. What is happening at the headquarters in Japan gives the 56-year-old confidence in terms of the future. "In Japan they are restructuring not only the people, but also the way to proceed, also to develop the machine", he finally revealed.
