“I will always have full respect for Honda. But now my mind is only on coming back to the top with Honda. Then of course, if I cannot, because I feel like I don’t have the tools, I will try to find the best for me. And this is something that I already said to them.”
On the eve of the 2022 Valencia Grand Prix, Autosport sat down with Marc Marquez to speak about the season just gone and his hopes of returning to the front of the MotoGP grid now he has fully recovered from the right arm he badly broke in 2020.
The above quote (published in the 22 December 2022 issue of Autosport magazine) was his response when asked, if Honda’s ongoing struggles could not be resolved, is he already looking at his next career move beyond 2024. Now, on the eve of the 2023 Valencia GP, Marquez once again sits down with Autosport… and is facing his final race with Honda.
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Marquez’s decision to join Gresini Racing on a year-old Ducati for 2024 may have come as a shock when it was first touted back in September. But the warning had already been issued to Honda.
Despite scoring pole in the opening round in Portugal, the form of the 2023 Honda didn’t suggest it would be a match for MotoGP’s now dominant European marques. Indeed, as we head to the final round of the campaign, the stats make for grim reading.
In 19 rounds this season, Marquez has just one grand prix podium – which came in the wet in Japan. He has 27 crashes, equalling his top tally for a campaign, and has just 89 points to his credit. At current pace, he is on course to register his worst ever season points haul, having missed five rounds with injury.
All of this from a partnership that has yielded six world titles in eight years and 59 MotoGP victories between 2013 and 2021.
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Marquez won his sixth premier class title in 2019 but has since ended a season in the top 10 of the standings only once
So, it’s not difficult to see why he made the decision he did. But don’t mistake his desire to win with one of cold calculation. Spending his entire MotoGP career with Honda, leaving – and only being able to take one of his current crew, tyre technician Javi Ortiz, with him – was no easy decision.
“[It’s] difficult and still difficult to realise that next week I will have my last race with Honda this year… in the future, you…
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