“We are all heartbroken, I bet that he too, well, he is the first one who is devastated, very affected, no one likes to make a decision like that. But these things happen in life. There are times when our paths cross and Marc Márquez has decided that Honda cannot offer him, next year, a competitive motorcycle, no longer a winner, a motorcycle that tests him and he has decided to change teams and brands to find out, to check, to experiment, to find out, with a real motorcycle, with a real racing motorcycle, if he can still fight, again, for the MotoGP world title”.
This is the summary of what happened in the last four months. This is the true reality of what happened. After 11 years of marriage, total dominance in the category, breaking, in 2013, all precocity records in the top category, winning 6 world titles, 59 victories (so far), 110 podiums and 64 pole positions. , Honda and MM93 have made a joint statement in which they demonstrate, like good and fruitful marriages, that they have enjoyed the journey and they separate, wishing each other the best of luck, which, in reality, is an uncertain, very uncertain future for both of them. protagonists of divorce.
painful divorce
Honda, which will remain one hundred percent linked to Repsol in the year of its 30th birthday (2024) and in the season in which Repsol biofuels enter competition, is left without its best champion and, not only that, without the only pilot who knows how to fly that devilish thing and already uncompetitive Honda RC213V and you will have to find a replacement now! And Márquez, let’s not fool ourselves and he is the one who knows it best, is going into the lion’s den because his more than certain signing, for only one year, the one he had left with the official Repsol Honda team, for the Gresini Racing team Ducati is surrounded by doubt and uncertainty.
In its day, Ducati Corse, The official team of the Borgo Panigale firm did not even consider signing Márquezhe despised it and, now, with the help of a client team, the team of Nadia Padovani, Gresini’s widow and one of the most modest and poor teams in the MotoGP paddock, that is, the fourth Ducati team behind the official one, Jorge Martín’s Prima Pramac and the one owned by Valentino Rossi, he must accept it in the structure of the Bordo Panigale factory.
Things get complicated for both of them, of course. Honda, which, in theory, as a result of the movement generated by Márquez, is causing a revolution within its competition department (HRC) that, for the moment, has not worked, despite the desperate efforts and the desolation it has suffered. Alberto Puig, Team Manager of his official team, has not been able to convince Márquez to stay. And MM93 believes that, at the moment, with what Honda has and offers him, at the moment, he does not believe that he will have a winning motorcycle in 2024 and that is why he is trying to find a life in another team, with a winning motorcycle, although the Next year he will have to race, at most, with this year’s ‘Desmosedici’, not with the future 2024 one.
When, on September 10, from Misano, El Periódico announced that Márquez was preparing a “stay” to explain that he would fulfill the remaining year of his contract with the winged firm (2024), everything seemed to indicate that this would be the case. What’s more, the eight-time world champion’s entourage received the news with a brief ‘of the record’: “The information is coherent, totally coherent.” And, at that time, Márquez believed that Honda was going to be able to fulfill its commitments focused, mainly, on the signing of several European engineers, starting with the Ducati guru, Gigi Dall’Igna, who, for the second time in the two In recent years, it has finally ruled out the Japanese brand again.
Alberto Puig has lived in despair these last few months trying, without success, to convince Honda to make the necessary technical changes to his staff to retain Márquez
From there and after verifying that Honda’s first 2024 ‘proto’ was actually a slight modification, again, of the current and barely competitive RC213V, Márquez seriously began to think about saying goodbye. There was one point that made him hesitate to announce it after the test in Italy and it was that Alberto Puig asked him that, if there was a possibility of leaving Honda, he should, first, say it to the face of the Honda bosses, who had respected his million-dollar contract during the last three years, even when he spent more than half the contract without running.
Márquez saw it logical to tell the Japanese bosses first but, not even after the meeting he held with the top of Honda, last Saturday, in Motegi, did it provoke an immediate response from the Catalan driver, since until last night, a few hours before If the ultimatum offered by Japan is met (tomorrow), the pilot from Cervera (Lleida) has not opened his mouth and today the joint statement appeared.
Doubts about the change
The pain, I insist, is deep at Honda, although many believe that the Japanese bosses never sat down in front of Márquez and asked him to “tell us what you need”, at no time paying attention to Alberto Puig, his right-hand man on the circuits, who He was the one who spent months telling them that they would lose Marc if they didn’t make a real revolution in their racing department. They didn’t do it and they have lost it.
“Another thing is that Márquez’s jump to Ducati, sorry, to the Gresini Racing Team, which is not Ducati, by Marc, is a success,” one of the sources tells El Periódico de Catalunya, from the Prensa Ibérica Group. most valid of the Repsol Honda team. “Let’s not fool ourselves, he goes to the fourth Ducati team, far behind the official team, Pramac and VR46. It seems that Ducati loves having Marc but, perhaps, more to neutralize him than to give him the chance to win his seventh title.”
And also, everything seems to indicate that Marc will not be able to take his new team to his second family, his ‘my circuit family’, who are his engineer and friend Santi Hernández, Carlos Griñán, chief mechanic, Jordi Castellá, his trusted mechanic, Xavi Ortiz, tire expert…among other reasons because they also have a current contract with the Repsol Honda ‘team’, Gresini has already closed the renewal of the technical team that is now with Fabio Di Giannantonio and, of course, the salaries that Honda pays have nothing to do with those that Gresini pays.
2023-10-04 16:07:45
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