Nakagami: New Honda 'a huge difference', Marquez: 'Radical' change

No factory has made a more 'radical' change to its MotoGP machine for 2022 than Honda, which has fundamentally altered the balance and character of its RCV to try and regain the technical initiative.

Rider feedback has been highly encouraging and while Pol Espargaro set the fastest lap time during pre-season testing in Mandalika, it was the average times and race pace of the four Hondas that turned heads the most.

Some have even suggested Honda might have indulged in some 'sandbagging' in terms of the bike's full potential over the winter, but all will become clearer when practice for the Qatar season opener begins tomorrow.

"As you can see from the outside, Honda made a big, big change and also inside – when I jumped on the bike - the feeling was a huge difference," said LCR's Takaaki Nakagami, who set the best pace of any rider during a Mandalika race simulation.

"The first impression was, maybe difficult. But lap-bylap I started to understand that this bike is a completely different concept and I need to adapt the riding style. But after that I felt this bike is much better than last year's.

"Definitely it creates a lot of rear grip and then the bike is more stable on braking. And the mid-corner. And of course exit.

"It's one thing to make a lap time and another to manage for the race distance. But during the tests I was really strong for the race pace, race distance.

"But still it's a new bike so maybe every race Honda will try to do some updates for the parts and other things. I'm really interested and really looking forward to this weekend."

Team-mate Alex Marquez, who all but equalled Nakagami's race simulation pace in testing, thinks the size of the changes mean it will probably take half a season to understand how to get the most out of the machine.

"The bike is completely different. It's nothing like last year's bike. So it’s something that still we need to try many set-ups," he said. "I'm sure that the base set-up will be completely different from Qatar by the mid-season because we need to discover many things. But the bike is better. More grip."

Honda answered its riders' calls by providing more rear grip.

"The rear grip solved a lot of problems that you can have on a bike," Marquez explained. "When you don’t have rear grip the turning is shit. The stopping is really bad. Everything is difficult. When you have rear grip, everything is nicer. So it's completely different."

Alex's brother and eight-time world champion Marc Marquez said: "Honda took a big step and, honestly speaking, I feel like I changed brands because it’s a completely different bike."

"In the tests we were very fast, but it was a very new bike," said factory team-mate Pol Espargaro. "So it means that there is margin to improve. And to feel like that, that the bike is working and also we have some margin to improve the bike through the year, that's magnificent.

"We have only tested in three places, Jerez, Sepang and Mandalika, but in all three places we were fast."

Marc's well documented injuries meant Honda has only won three races since the end of 2019, but younger brother Alex understands why it took until this season to make such fundamental changes.

"In 2020 it didn't really make sense to change [the bike] because they were coming from many wins and the points record with Marc, so that bike was working," Alex said. "In 2020 it was not bad, and we saw in the last races I was able to be on the podium in my first season.

"But it's true that in 2021 many factories made a really big step and we were a little bit limited then. So now they think it's the right choice to make a radical change that is not really usual in Honda.

"So it will interesting to see where we are in a race weekend, which is the really important thing. Testing is one thing but here is where everybody will show their real potential."

Asked directly if he had indulged in any sandbagging during testing, Marquez hesitated before replying:

"I mean… I tried to show my potential in every moment. It's true that maybe a time attack, where I'm not really a specialist, was not my strongest point. But in rhythm, like in Malaysia I focussed to make a long run in the second day. Also in Mandalika.

"So I was trying to show all my cards but thinking more on race pace than qualifying times. So it will be interesting to see here."

But the night race format and specially an earlier 6pm race start means Qatar will be far from a normal weekend.

"We have FP2 at night, FP1 and FP3 in the day, so that will be interesting to see but I'm ready for everything," said Marquez.

Nakagami added: "Looks like FP2 will be really important. So after FP1 it'll be like going straight to qualifying. So we need to prepare for plan A, B, C. But anyway I'm feeling really good with the team and also the bike so I'm really looking forward to be competitive from FP1 and ready for the race.

"We are just looking for the result from the first race. Be clever and competitive from the beginning and hopefully we can have a great Sunday."

Nakagami and Alex Marquez failed to score a single point in last year's back-to-back Doha races.