The catch-22 Honda faces in MotoGP with Marquez sidelined

The Andalusian Grand Prix weekend marked a bit of unwanted history for Honda, as it was the first time since 2013, when Marc Marquez stepped up to MotoGP with the marque, that he did not start a race.

His valiant comeback effort just days after surgery on the right arm he broke in a violent highside in the latter stages of last week's Spanish GP, also at Jerez, had to be abandoned after qualifying as a loss of power in his arm forced him to listen to his body, honour his promise to Honda and knock it on the head.

Much has been made of Marquez's comeback attempt and of Honda allowing him to do so. But team boss Alberto Puig summed it up perfectly: "A champion cannot stay at home if he thinks he has the option or a slight chance [to ride]."

The last week has been a bruising one for Honda, with its two star riders and the only men who have taken the RC213V to the podium in the last two years, Marquez and LCR's Cal Crutchlow, sustaining injuries. Crutchlow did race at the weekend, but was a lapped 13th after battling serious arm pump issues on his right arm - a legacy of him having to overcompensate due to the fracture on his left wrist.

LCR's Takaaki Nakagami ended up just six tenths from the podium in fourth on the year-old Honda, while Alex Marquez rose from last to eighth in a highly attritional race on the factory bike.

Although Nakagami's weekend was impressive, it came at the same circuit where his one-lap pace flattered to deceive in the Spanish GP and he was only 10th - overtaken by the resurging Marc Marquez before his crash. If anything, his Andalusian GP should have been stronger - after all, he is riding the championship winning bike from 2019, and it's not a million miles off what Marc Marquez should have dominated the Spanish GP on.

Nakagami said after qualifying eighth for the Andalusian round that his step forward came from copying Marquez's braking style. But his team-mate Crutchlow suggested Nakagami should have been able to go and win on Sunday if he was riding more like Marquez - something that cannot be done by simply looking at data.

"He should the win the race" Crutchlow quipped. "Because if you look at Marc's data and you can suddenly ride like Marc, you should win the race. You don't gain [all that time] by looking at data.

"Sure he might have gained some [time] on braking, he might look at the throttle trace, but you can't copy someone else's style. If you jump one second a lap in a weekend, it's in your head. It's not [because] you looked at some squiggly lines."

And herein lies a problem Honda has long faced, but up until now hasn't done much about: the RC213V is only consistently strong in the hands of one rider, and he was absent at the weekend. Even then, we saw that the Honda's "critical" front end - as Crutchlow explained to Autosport during the Spanish GP weekend - bite Marquez when he had that spectacular slide through Turn 4 on the fifth lap that ultimately set him on the path that would see him in a Barcelona operating room 48 hours later.

"We have to keep pushing, that's our only way to gain any time, the whole lap. We gain everything in the braking and with the rider manually riding the bike, so we keep going past that limit" Cal Crutchlow

Throughout that season-opening weekend, evidence of the Honda's cornering pitfalls were evidenced - with both Marquez brothers having front-end falls on Friday, while Crutchlow had the one on Sunday morning which broke his wrist.

"It's very critical is the Honda," Crutchlow said. "The front of the bike is really, really critical to manage.

"Going from what we already know from previous years, it's Honda's strong point to tip into the corner, but it's also a weak point as well because we have to keep pushing, that's our only way to gain any time, the whole lap. We gain everything in the braking and with the rider manually riding the bike, so we keep going past that limit obviously."

Puig was challenged on this by Dorna's pitlane reporter Simon Crafar during Friday practice, but the Honda team boss' response echoed what he has already said over the past year in regards to the difficulty of the RC213V.

"I will answer this very quick, we won the [last six of] seven championships," Puig stated. "Whatever you say, yes, but finally who is winning? We have a package we believe is strong and that's it."

Messages on social media after Puig's comments all followed the same sentiment; that the reality is the rider won those titles rather than the manufacturer. Marquez single-handedly took Honda to the riders', teams' and constructors' crowns last year with top two results in 18 of the 19 races - including 12 victories.

If we remove Marquez from existence, Andrea Dovizioso is crowned 2019 champion with 316 points while the top Honda rider is Crutchlow on 158. In fact, if you remove Marquez from the six years he was crowned champion, the picture for Honda is quite startling.

In 2013, Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo wins the title with 359 points, with Dani Pedrosa top Honda runner on 335. In 2014, Valentino Rossi makes it another win for Yamaha on 350 points while Pedrosa misses out on 300. In 2016, Pedrosa trails Rossi by 87 points, while he's 30 points behind Dovizioso in 2017. Crutchlow becomes top Honda runner in 2018 and '19, though trails Dovizioso by 95 and 158 points respectively.

Then throw into the mix injuries which ruled Pedrosa out of three races in 2016 and Crutchlow out of three rounds at the end of 2018, while the troubles with Honda's acceleration and turning over the last four seasons are well documented. Despite Puig's public dismissiveness, the truth is Marquez has been the one making the difference on a notoriously difficult machine. And while Crutchlow has also shown his class on the RC213V, Honda could never rely on him to pick up the pieces on a consistent basis.

That's in stark contrast to Yamaha - boasting one of the grid's friendliest bikes - whose top rider currently is a satellite rider, with Fabio Quartararo taking maximum points in 2020 so far. In fact, Yamaha was headed for a possible 1-2-3-4 on Sunday before Franco Morbidelli's SRT M1 broke down.

Honda has created its current problem with who it has hired over the last 10 years. Casey Stoner joined the marque for 2011 following several difficult years of the 800cc era for HRC, and dominated the 2011 campaign. But the bike wasn't an easy one, as the 2012 machine showed with the front chatter problems it developed over the winter.

Yet, had it not been for injury, Stoner would have likely won that year's crown as well. And yes, Pedrosa came a close second to Lorenzo. But only on three occasions across those two years did a non-Yamaha or Honda bike stand on the podium - a world away from the ultra-competitive grid we have now.

Then for 2013 along comes Marquez, who has repeatedly outshone the machinery he has been on to utterly crush his opposition. This is where Honda's biggest issue comes.

Marquez's absence and the points that have gone missing as a result means it very clearly needs to build a more rideable bike, which it is doing as evidenced by the chassis work it had Crutchlow carry out over the last two weeks at Jerez.

Yet, given that Marquez would have almost certainly been leading the standings had it not been for his Spanish GP crash - based on his outstanding pace at the first Jerez round - and the fact that he is locked into a four-year contract with Honda, it will be wary of making too many changes to the RC213V at the risk of destabilising Marquez's feeling on the bike.

Few, if any riders on the MotoGP grid would have saved the front-end slide he had at Turn 4 during the Spanish GP. Marquez has proven time and time again that he is at one with that motorcycle, which makes it an almost impossible job for Honda to try and build a bike that others can also use. And yet it must, now that we know Marquez isn't indestructible.