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Honda's work to try to regain competitiveness in MotoGP continues unabated, and HRC brought a near-revolutionary RCV to the track in Jerez for LCR riders Zarco and Nakagami to try in Monday's tests. The same prototype had been tried with little satisfaction by both Joan Mir and Luca Marini in a closed-door private test session in Barcelona. The result is that all four riders from the Japanese manufacturer were quite critical of this evolution, which did not bring the hoped-for benefits.
At the center of attention and also of some criticism of Zarco in particular, it ended up in the hands of Stefan Bradl, who holds the role of Honda's official tester and who has the task of sorting out the innovations on the track and then passing them on to the Factory riders. The German ended up almost in the dock after Jerez, as if he was responsible for the bike's poor or nonexistent progress, which is completely wrong. In fact, Bradl merely tests the new features on the track and then makes his comments, and after the Jerez weekend he wanted to make it clear that even from his point of view that evolution does not live up to expectations.
"It is in line with what I said, I would not have put the bike together like that, it was the company's decision," were Bradl's words reported by our colleagues at Speedweek, "it was given to me and I rode it in Jerez. I did that and then I gave my opinion. But it is also true that at the moment we have nothing else."
For Bradl, the Honda building site is open even if from the outside there is no progress to be seen.
"Maybe in public you can't always tell, but right now we are working on so many aspects of the bike. But we haven't found the right direction yet. Monday's test in Jerez was confirmation of that. But you have to give the riders something to try. It is difficult to judge whether to give them something new that they are not satisfied with or not to give them anything new to try."
Maybe it just takes time and patience.
"All I can say is that Honda is making a massive effort and doing a lot. The only bitterness is that we are not making progress at the moment. We are not sitting on our hands. Honda is like a big oil tanker that cannot change direction overnight."
