MotoGP, Espargaró: “The Honda is very strong, but not with 4-year old tyres”

MotoGP, Espargaró: “The Honda is very strong, but not with 4-year old tyres”

After the race, the Spaniard explains why the difficulties with the RC213V can be attributed to the tyres Michelin brought to Mandalika

21.03.2022 ( Aggiornata il 21.03.2022 15:24 )

What we saw at Mandalika was clearly not the same Honda we’d admired two weeks ago in Qatar. The first signs emerged early on in the weekend and became increasingly evident as Marc Marquez suffered three crashes in two days, setbacks that in fact forced the eight-time champ to sit out the race.

And so Pol Espargaró was tasked with flying the flag for the Japanese manufacturer, the Spaniard ultimately crossing the line in twelfth position, 33.5 seconds from the KTM of race winner, Miguel Oliveira. A result in stark contrast to the podium scored in Lusail. So, which is the real RC213V?

"In my opinion, the Honda is one of the fastest bikes”, comments Polyccio, during an interview with Sky Sport MotoGP at the end of the race. "At Jerez, the bike was almost dead, after the crash at Valencia. In Malaysia, I think we finished fourth, two tenths from first, when we would normally be slow. Then we finished first in the tests here at Mandalika. In Qatar I finished the race third. The Honda is strong, very strong, but we’re lacking experience and need the tyres we chose for this year, not ones that were already used four years ago" continues the Spaniard, convinced that this step backwards has to do with the tyres with stiffer carcass that Michelin brought to Indonesia to deal with the high temperatures forecast over the weekend.

"The bike is new and very different from a four-year old bike, and so the tyres need to be modern and suited to this type of bike”, comments Pol . “We had more problems than the others here. We need to work, but we know the bike is strong".

Espargaró: "Changing tyres changes the whole way the bike works"


Like the Suzuki, then, the Honda also seems particularly sensitive to the change of carcass. Espargaró outlines why this is: "At Honda they’re very good at building the bike. This means that when they design a bike, they do it based on a specific tyre, like those we saw during testing. So when the tyres change, it might seem like a small thing, but it’s actually very big because when you change the tyres on a bike, you change the whole way it works. Honda has done well to build this RC213V, but this is something you can’t control. We hope it doesn’t happen again during the season”.

The difficulties are nevertheless not getting Espargaró down.

"I see it as a weekend in which you fall and are disappointed”, observes the Spaniard, seeing the glass half full. “We head to Argentina now, with the tyres we need, the ones we used before coming here and that work well with our bike, because the bike is built for those tyres, not for the ones we used this weekend. We’ll see what we can do in Argentina, but I’m keen to get there and see how the Honda performs, because I was having a lot of fun before coming here".

Translated by Heather Watson

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