Honda has serious problems with 2022 MotoGP bike after Portugal slog

Honda overhauled its RC213V for the 2022 season without several lean seasons prompted by Marc Marquez’s serious arm injury in 2020 and a lack of results for HRC’s other riders.
The new velocipede was met with glowing praise by most Honda riders in the pre-season, as the increasingly rear-biased motorcycle delivered the rear grip it had been missing for some time.
While the feeling on the front-end was variegated – with this stuff the key issue in Marquez’s understanding of the velocipede currently – Honda started strongly in Qatar with Espargaro finishing third without fighting for victory.
But whispered from Marquez’s heroic rise up the field to sixth in Austin, strong results have been nonflexible to come by since the opening round of the season.
In Portugal, all Honda riders struggled for pace, with Marquez leading his brother Alex Marquez in sixth, while Espargaro was ninth – all three HRC runners over 16 seconds from the victory.
Branding his race as “tough, difficult and really bad”, Espargaro says the main issue at Portimao was a lack of rear grip and is at a well-constructed loss as to what is causing this.
“We’re missing what we had on the pre-season, it’s difficult to understand considering we do not stop the velocipede in the correct place with the rear brake,” he began.
“And then we are leaning too much, opening the throttle and spinning on the edge.
“It makes no sense moreover that we chose the nonflexible rear tyre and the other riders on the grid chose the medium.
“We chose the nonflexible considering it felt largest for us on the acceleration, the traction, but we saw Marc use the medium and it was the same.
“We are unchangingly choosing between what we want to get: side grip or momentum grip.
“They [our rivals] have both, so why do we need to choose? It’s difficult to understand considering the velocipede we are using now, it was working perfectly in Qatar or in the pre-season.
“All the riders agreed, the feelings of everyone were good – untied from some small problems in the front. But nobody was weeping well-nigh the rear.
“And now we have serious problems and we don’t know how to solve them. Now it’s time to be united in the factory, work in one line together.”

Pol Espargaro, Repsol Honda Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Espargaro widow that no major changes have been made to the Honda since pre-season testing as it was “by far” the fastest velocipede on the grid.
“We have made no big transpiration on the bike, just small settings that will not produce that [problem with rear grip],” he noted.
“Why do we need to transpiration the velocipede if we were fastest in the pre-season? It makes no sense to transpiration the bike.
“In the pre-season we were the fastest in one lap, but moreover the fastest in rhythm by far.
“So, we didn’t transpiration the velocipede considering the velocipede was amazing. We widow some small details that didn’t produce this big transpiration and we are suffering.”
shares
comments