“I thought last year was the hardest. But if you look at the results, this year it’s even worse. We Honda riders are just fighting among ourselves at the back of the field. We haven’t had the feeling on any weekend that we can fight for a place in the top ten on our own. We weren’t even sure if we would get a point at all.”
A strong statement with which LCR Honda rider Takaaki Nakagami aptly summed up the Honda Racing Corporation’s 2024 season so far at the beginning of June after the seventh MotoGP race weekend in Mugello. Nothing remains of the hoped-for upswing from the winter tests. “The truth is that we are last if nobody crashes in front of us,” reveals the Japanese. “Somehow we managed to score a point or two in the last few races – but only because someone crashed in front of us. If five people crashed, we get one or two points. But if nobody crashes, then we are 19th, 20th or 21st.”
Honda still without a top-ten result in the Grand Prix and Q2 appearance in 2024
In fact, the four HRC riders have so far been lagging behind in the 2024 MotoGP season. After 14 races [je 7 Sprints und GPs, Anm.] LCR Honda has only 17 World Championship points and Repsol Honda 13 points, which puts the two teams way down at the bottom of the team rankings. Four twelfth places in a main race are the best placings in the statistics, only in the chaotic and crash-filled sprint in Jerez did Joan Mir make it into the top ten once, finishing ninth. In qualifying, no Honda rider made it to Q2, two 13th places by Johann Zarco are by far the best starting positions.
It is therefore not surprising that Nakagami spoke of the most difficult phase of his Honda career so far after the Italian Grand Prix. HRC’s regular drivers have repeatedly reported in recent months that they have reached a new low. But how dramatic will the Honda crisis really be in 2024? An analysis of the figures from previous seasons reveals devastating results. Because even if the brilliant performances of MotoGP superstar Marc Marquez or the exceptionally strong performance of Alex Rins in 2023 in Austin, which otherwise ‘beautify’ the performance of the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer, are taken out of the equation, Honda is in a much worse position this season than ever before.
Honda’s MotoGP performance after seven Grand Prix since 2020
| category | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| World Cup points | 30 | 44 | 88 | 92 | 94 |
| Best GP result | 12. | 9. | 3. | 4. | 2. |
| Best qualifying | 13. | 10. | 4. | 5. | 2. |
| Through. Backlog | 27.959 sec. | 17.542 sec. | 16.386 sec. | 14.924 sec. | 10.110 sec. |
The table above shows a steady regression for the HRC Group in all four categories over the past five years. While individual top results were still possible for Pol Espargaro, Alex Marquez and Nakagami between 2020 and 2022, things have gone downhill especially since 2023. Even then, the Honda riders – with the exception of Rins in Austin – only just made it into the top ten, whether in qualifying or the race. But in 2024, even that will no longer be possible.
Why this is the case is revealed by a look at the average time gap that the best-placed Honda rider had to the race winner when he crossed the finish line. While this gap was just under ten seconds in the 2020 Corona season, it grew to 17.5 seconds by 2023. Already a big gap, but last winter alone Honda lost another almost ten seconds to the MotoGP leaders. The leading HRC rider is on average almost 28 seconds behind in the current season, which means that finishing in the top ten in the modern, closely fought and highly competitive MotoGP is simply no longer possible.