DIY

Regular readers will recognise my comments about Honda and its well-known disloyalty to its Grand Prix riders. In most recent times it has been demonstrated by their shameful treatment of 8 times world champion, Marc Marquez. Marc’s trials at the hands of Big Red are well documented but rarely correctly understood by a public whose minds were unprepared to be sympathetic after his 2020 accident and subsequent “recovery”

Just why people turned on him with the vehemence they demonstrated is a consequence of their minds being poisoned by Valentino Rossi and his ongoing campaign to try and paint Marc as the villain at Sepang. This campaign continues to this day and will forever taint Rossi’s legacy but its immediate consequence, post Jerez, was to depict Marc, once he returned from injury, as a rider who could only achieve top results when he was riding the best machine.

“The bike is built around Marquez, he can’t develop the bike so none of the other Honda riders are doing any good either.” “They need to change the bike so the rest of the Honda riders can feel comfortable on it.” was another piece of drivel trotted out by the “experts.” The fact that this concept went against all established Grand Prix wisdom and practice, seemed to be lost on them. Historically, every team builds the bike around their star rider and other team members are expected to adapt. It has ever been thus. But Marc’s ongoing struggles, finally solved some years afterwards when doctors discovered that his medical team had screwed up his original orthopaedics, seemed to give credence to the “expert’s” opinions. We now know that it wasn’t a Marc problem, it was, and remains, a HONDA problem as both a fit Marc and all the other riders have continued to struggle with a plainly uncompetitive bike.

This fact was proven at the first test day of 2024 when Marc got to ride the Ducati for the first time. After 4 laps he was at the top of the leader board and returned to the pits with the above grin on his face that the TV cameras hurried to obscure. It was a waste of time, it was a case of one picture being better than a thousand words.

The rest of the season shouted from the rooftops that the Honda was the dog that we all could see that it had been. On a year-old bike Marc qualified well, led races and won races, ultimately finishing 3rd in the championship and being streets in front of the other riders on GP23 bikes. And what of the Honda riders? With the exception of a few bright performances from Zarco, every race finished with the Hondas at the bottom of the standings.

So, what is my point? Just that Honda builds race bikes to meet the expectations of their ENGINEERS and NOT their riders. It has ever been thus and let me give you a few examples.

In 1979 Honda decided that they would attempt to circumvent the rules of the day that restricted bikes in the 500cc category to four cylinders by designing and building the 4 stroke oval-piston NR500, effectively a V8. Despite a couple of shining performances, the bike was a dog and Honda riders had to wait until 1982 for Honda to finally admit defeat and build a two stroke with which Freddie Spencer promptly won the 1983 world championship.

At last, Honda was on the right track, we thought, but the engineers thought otherwise. Instead of basing their 1984 bike on the NS platform, they introduced the ludicrous “upside-down” NSR500 which not only didn’t GO well, it didn’t even LOOK good. They did eventually sort themselves out but not before Spencer’s chance of defending his 1983 title had well and truly passed. Once the aberration of the 1984 disaster was over, Honda at least listened to the riders for 1985 and Spencer went out and won the 500cc title, backing it up to win the 250cc title as well in the same year.

The NSR500 was a super bike and its success is now legendary.

Fast forward to 1988 and Honda’s engineers fouled their own nest again. Australia’s Wayne Gardner had won the 500cc title in 1987 and was raging hot favourite to back up in 1988. But the engineers, impressed with Honda’s success in F1, decided that a lower, longer bike would be just the thing for the 500cc championship chase.

It wasn’t. It was a dog also. And here’s how the story went, from the mouth of Wayne himself in the Q&A after the premiere of his movie in Wollongong.

We were sitting in my motorhome next to the similar one of Kevin Schwantz, Wayne begins (I am paraphrasing here, the reason for lack of quotation marks). Kevin’s RG500 was parked next to my motorhome and, as I looked at it, it became obvious to me that, while my 1988 bike was long and low, his was short and tall, just like my 1987 bike had been. I quickly grabbed my camera and took as many photos of the bike as I could (the motorhome had heavily tinted windows). I took the film out and gave it to one of my mechanics to take it into town and get it processed.

Once the film was processed and Wayne had taken similar photos of his NSR, the difference between the bikes was very clear.

Our next step was to surreptitiously disassemble our spare bike away from the track, and, using our photos and some detailed drawings of the bike, we hacked it up and re-welded it back together to resemble the proportions of the Suzuki. We had some old fairings from last year and, once they were fitted, we took the bike out for testing. As we expected, but didn’t dare to hope, all the evil characteristics of the current model were gone.

Once we had done this and documented it, we took our findings to the Honda boffins and showed them what we had done. They were furious, of course, nobody messes with the “works” bike, but when we showed them the testing data they had to admit that “our” bike was vastly superior to the factory model.

Wayne raced the rest of the season on the “bitsa” (built by the factory) and became a winner again. In fact, it was only a cooling system problem in the last race of the season that deprived him of back-to-back championships.

Again the factory had built a bike that the boffins thought would be good but it wasn’t.

Of course, Honda’s betrayal of Wayne by hiring Lawson behind his back is another story and another example of how their “loyalty” to their riders has always been questionable.

From 2015 to 2020 Marc won four consecutive championships and Rossi, in a wonderful piece of karma, didn’t win ANY. Indeed, once Marc entered MotoGP in 2013, Rossi never won another title. 8 barren years with nothing but a few wins to show for it.

Honda did well out of both of them, but never shifted from their loyalty to the BRAND rather than to their riders and, finally, paid the penalty when Marc jumped ship to Ducati at the start of 2024 leaving them in the poorest position that they had been in living memory.

So, let’s be clear. Hondas failures in recent years have NOTHING to do with the deficiency of their riders, any of them. The fault has always been back at the factory where failure to listen to their riders and engineering smugness has led to the production of bikes that have lagged further and further behind their competitors and looks like continuing to do so.

There used to be an old saying in the early days of TV. It said, “Do not adjust your set, the fault is in the programme.” It certainly applies to HRC in the last 5 years. As a dedicated Honda man I hope that they wake up and build a bike that is competitive, but I can’t see it happening in the short term.