‘Well-born’ new Honda still has a mountain to climb

One of the most anticipated storylines of the 2024 MotoGP season is over at Honda – as the paddock looks towards 2020 world champion Joan Mir and his new team-mate Luca Marini to see whether a supposed change in direction from the Japanese factory will live up to the hype and save Honda from a run of form so bad that it saw six-time champion Marc Marquez walk away from his contract at the end of 2023.

There’s added anticipation at this week’s Sepang tests, too, based on the final day of last year at Valencia, where both Mir and Marini showed good pace, hinting that the new RC213V model might finally be on a path to turning around Honda’s woes.

It’s been no secret for quite some time about why the bike has struggled so much, either.

Still very much retaining the DNA of past MotoGP machines and failing to move in time with the aerodynamics wars that now dominate the championship, it was apparent to all that Honda needed to adapt rather than persevere.

And, after the 2024-kickstarting shakedown (an outing that only Honda and Yamaha, with their newly-granted ‘Rank D’ concession status, were able to field their full line-ups at), it sounds like the changes Honda needed are finally coming along – even if that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll translate into instant results.

An RC213V rebuild

“Yes,” Mir emphatically told The Race when asked if Honda’s development direction had now changed for the better. “That is clear. Looks that the new bike is more powerful on the straight, you could see that the aerodynamics are not as last year, that were almost none, they started to work on it.

“They are still small compared to others, it’s true. But well, we are making some steps, trying to understand also for a rider, for me for example I was never… I don’t know how much we can do with aerodynamics, because the Suzuki was not the best bike in terms of aerodynamics. And last year this bike was also not the perfect machine in terms of aerodynamics.

“So we’re trying to understand many things on this. This test also I understood many things. So, let’s try to keep positive and to believe in the next three days we can make another step, that if we make another one we will be very close.”

Marini, too, was adamant things were moving in the right way, even compared to the already-promising Valencia outings.

“I have to say,” he said, “very good improvements compared to Valencia. But because Valencia was not so good, sincerely, [in terms of] the feeling in the bike, because there were many areas to work.

“While here everything is going in a good direction but still we need to work on every area, especially on acceleration, exit from the corners, more grip in the rear.

“So we need to work a little bit on this, first of all, and then also the aerodynamics side we are a little bit- not behind but with less experience than the other manufacturers, that…