The start of the MotoGP season is approaching, with the first Sepang tests underway in the second week of February, and the questions that will be resolved during the opening stages of the World Championship are accumulating. One of the most repeated is what will happen to Honda and, therefore, to Marc Márquez. With the ilerdense dedicating the winter to recovering his best form, will the RC213V be up to the task? To solve the first problems you have to understand them, and some still wonder what happened to the Japanese factory in 2022.
It is the case of Livio Suppo, who returned to the grid as Suzuki boss last year and achieved great success in his seven years with the golden wing. This is how the Italian explains in MotoGP.com how he saw another Repsol Honda debacle from the outside: “All the riders think the Honda isn’t that good, right? A year ago, in the pre-season tests and in the first race in Qatar, everyone said that Honda had returned. Even Pol told the media that they could fight with that bike, that they were going in the right direction and so on. But what happened next?”
“How does a bike go from finishing on the podium in Qatar, and Pol had the potential to win that race. (he was third in the only podium he signed throughout the year), to then in the middle of the season fight to finish inside the top ten? It is very strange”, analyzes Suppo. So much so that, even knowing how Honda works on the inside, he is not able to explain why this situation came to be (it was the worst factory in 2022): “Honestly speaking, it’s almost impossible to understand what happened last year.”
What you expect for 2023
So, coming from where they come from, “it will be very important to see how the beginning of the season unfolds.” “If the results improve immediately, the atmosphere, the motivation and the sensations of the drivers will improve and then it will be much easier. If it’s not easy at first, I’m not saying it’s impossible, but, of course, it will be more difficult, ”says Suppo, who hopes that his former colleagues will come to the fore at once: “I hope they can rescue that ship that is in the middle of a storm right now, at a very difficult time.”