Marc Marquez admits that even with his new approach, he still overrides the MotoGP Honda every now and then to keep up to some extent
There’s nothing to be gained from the 2023 Honda RC213V at the moment, even for a star rider like Marc Marquez. For the second half of what is contracted to be his penultimate Honda season, Marquez has changed his approach.
Instead of always going full attack as he has done in the past, the six-time MotoGP champion is currently using the races more as test rides with an eye on the future. Whether that will actually see him still sitting on a Honda in 2024 is another matter.
With his new approach, Marquez has finished twice recently. In the first half of the season, he had not managed to do so in a single Sunday race. But: In the Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg Marquez finished P12, last Sunday in the Catalonia Grand Prix in Barcelona P13. His gap to the winner was more than 20 seconds in both races.
It was already clear to Marquez when he used his new tactics for the first time a few weeks ago that he could not aim for top results. Every now and then, the Honda star still overruns the bike even with his new approach. But there are limits to that.
“The difference is really big,” Marquez said at the Barcelona weekend, referring to the advantage that first and foremost the Aprilia and the Ducati have over the Honda at the moment. “In certain areas the difference is really huge. The only area where I can reasonably keep up or even be better, that’s braking.”
“But that means,” Marquez continued, “that I have to take risks. On one lap it might work, but on eleven, twelve or 24 laps it’s difficult.” And if the Honda rider nevertheless tries to take higher risks over a race distance – be it sprint or Grand Prix – than he actually sets out to do, then that also has a physical effect.
“If I want to keep this high rhythm [of Aprilia and Ducati], then I get arm pump. I suffer a lot more because I over ride the bike,” explained Marquez, whose last top-10 finish in a Grand Prix was almost a year ago. He finished P7 at the Malaysian Grand Prix in October 2022. Since then, the Honda star has either been conspicuous with crashes or, when he has stayed in the saddle, he has mostly ridden inconspicuously in the field.
