How Honda's praise for its 2022 MotoGP bike has turned into doubt

The positivity transmitted by Honda riders at the end of MotoGP's pre-season tests stands in brutal contrast with the bad feelings they expressed last Sunday at the MotoGP Portuguese Grand Prix. There, as Yamaha's defending champion Fabio Quartararo showed the rest of the grid a clean pair of heels, the first Honda to cross the finish line was that of Marc Marquez in sixth - more than 16 seconds behind.

Marquez spent the last part of the race battling with his LCR Honda-mounted brother Alex, whom he finally managed to keep at bay by just 0.020s, having left factory team-mate Pol Espargaro well behind in ninth.

The disparity of opinions between Honda's two main bets on its completely renewed for 2022 bike - which the marque hopes will regain the title it has not celebrate since 2019 - was stark in Portugal.

"Since pre-season I have not felt good with the bike," said Marquez, who offered an unusual version of himself, much less showy and aggressive. "It is true that some Honda riders say that this bike is fantastic, but I already warned that the conditions we had in the winter tests, with a lot of rubber on the asphalt, have nothing to do with those during a grand prix weekend."

Without naming him directly, it is clear that when he spoke of "some Honda riders" Marquez was referring to team-mate Espargaro. The caution that the six-time MotoGP champion has shown in pondering the strong points of the new prototype has contrasted starkly with Espargaro's optimism.

Since the debut of the new Honda, Espargaro found in it the rear grip he was looking for and missed so much in the previous model. In testing prior to the start of the championship at Sepang and Mandalika, then in the first round in Qatar, Espargaro was one of the fastest riders. In fact, at Losail, he finished on the podium after leading most of the race.

Espargaro started the season on a high with third place in Qatar, but since then Honda has struggled for form

Photo by: Akhil Puthiyedath

But two weeks later at Mandalika, the problems began - although on that occasion they were accentuated by the introduction of the old rear casing that Michelin brought to Indonesia, designed to combat blistering problems discovered in February's test on the standard 2022 tyres.

There, the rear grip vanished completely, and Marquez's determination to fight against it led him to accumulate four crashes in five practices. The last one, in the warm-up, left him out of action for that race and the next one in Argentina as a concussion led to the return of vision problems which plagued him at the end of 2021.

In Argentina, Espargaro crashed while running fourth and trying to stop the Suzuki of Alex Rins breaking away ahead of him. The Americas tour was completed in Austin, where Espargaro was affected by a gastroenteritis that left him 13th in the race, while Marquez stormed to sixth on his return after a bike problem left him last at Turn 1.

"It's very strange because, in circumstances with less grip on the track, we should still get more advantage. Marc tested the two bikes (the 2021 and 2022) in Malaysia and chose the new one because it generated more grip" Pol Espargaro

And so we arrived in Portugal, where several factors aligned to highlight the fractures at Honda - something magnified by the lack of dry track miles all weekend as Friday and Saturday were affected by rain.

"Obviously we would have liked to have had more time to ride in the dry," Honda's team manager Alberto Puig agreed on Monday. "But that's the same for everyone and it's not an excuse. It has become clear that we have to improve the bike."

One of the clearest in his diagnosis was from the youngest of the Marquez family, Alex: "When the conditions are dry and the other riders start to push to the maximum, that's when we start to suffer. Until then the bike accepts everything we ask of it."

What only further highlighted the problems Honda faces right now as the fact that Marc Marquez didn't feel strong in the mixed conditions on Saturday at Portimao. Typically no one on the grid is stronger than him when a track is half dry/half wet.

Marquez typically thrives in difficult weather, but was off-colour in Portugal

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

"I didn't feel comfortable at any point of the weekend," said the Spaniard, who has been saying for months that the new RC213V does not allow him to ride in a natural way. "Not even on Saturday, with the track half wet and half dry, which is when I can normally make the biggest difference."

"The thing is going wrong and we don't know why," said Espargaro. "What is it that the bike has lacked? Well, precisely what allowed us to be so fast this winter: rear grip.

"It's very strange because, in circumstances with less grip on the track, we should still get more advantage. Marc tested the two bikes (the 2021 and 2022) in Malaysia and chose the new one because it generated more grip."

While it is true that Marquez was unable to participate in the Algarve GP at Portimao last autumn due to the diplopia problems he suffered at the time, it is still surprising that this time there were 16 seconds between him and the winner. That's three seconds more than the 13 seconds that separated him from victory in the first Portimao race of 2021 last April, Marquez's long-awaited return after the fateful Spanish GP in 2020 when he badly broke his right arm.

Both Honda and its riders are giving themselves a few more days before starting to think about making a more drastic decision. On Friday, Marquez and Espargaro will take to the track again at Jerez, a somewhat more conventional circuit, where the first in-season test will be held on the Monday after the Spanish GP.

This test will be decisive to evaluate more clearly the virtues and defects of the new Honda, a bike that in less than three months has gone from receiving praise from all sides to generating doubts.

Honda has a lot of work ahead of it to establish its future direction

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images