Marquez ends Sepang MotoGP test ‘without the bike I need to win the title’

The eight-time world champion has not been enthused about the progress Honda has made with its troubled bike since last November’s Valencia test.

After the first day of this weekend’s Sepang test, Marquez felt he was “still far from the top” with the 2023 Honda.

The Spaniard started the test with four RC213Vs to try, whittling that down to one come the afternoon of Sunday’s session, which he says is the base he will continue with into the Portimao test next month.

However, he admits it’s not that different to the 2023 bike he tested last November and “needs another step” to close in on the frontrunners.

“We started the test with four bikes, second day we had three bikes, today we started with two bikes and in the afternoon was only one bike,” Marquez said after ending the Sepang test 10th overall, 0.777 seconds off the pace.

“So, I already decided that is the bike, this is the direction. But it’s not the bike I need to win the championship, I need another step from that bike.

“But it’s important to have one base clear and to forget about the others.”

Marquez added that Honda “doesn’t have time to bring another three bikes” to the Portugal test, but “it was important to choose one direction, one bike” to focus on.

“Basically, it’s very similar to the Valencia bike,” he added.

“It’s not a big difference, the concept is the same, and we have the same problems.

“So, now it’s time to fix those problems. I don’t know how, I just give my comments, give my inputs on how to improve the lap time.

“And for me it was quite good because it was easy to understand… of course you are faster or you are slower, but it was important to me to know when I wanted to be fast and when I wanted to be slow.

“So, this morning if you see my lap times, I started to be more consistent because we started to work.

“When I was riding well, the lap times were more or less not bad but still far from the first five guys.”