Marc Marquez has seemingly threatened to go elsewhere if Honda cannot deliver him a competitive MotoGP bike.
While the six-time premier class champion is unfit again, due to surgery on his problematic right arm, his absence has only served to magnify the Japanese marque’s problems.
It is last in the constructors’ championship, Repsol Honda is ninth in the teams’ championship, and Pol Espargaro has just the single podium for an RC213V rider all year, back in Round 1 at Qatar’s Lusail circuit.
Amid news that Marquez has been cleared to ride a motorcycle again following a check-up during the week, and hope from his team that he could ride in the Misano test on September 6-7, he sent a warning Honda’s way in an interview with Spanish MotoGP television rights holder DAZN.
“It depends on Honda, how much do I give them? The two years I have on my contract,” said the 29-year-old.
“I’m not going to deny it.
“I always say: ‘Honda is Honda, the brand of my dreams’. They have given me a lot of respect and I am very grateful for everything they have done, but as long as I compete and I think I have the level, I want a winning project.
“If not…” he concluded, without elaboration.
Marquez chose to attend part of last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, and made no secret of the fact that he wanted to keep an eye on how Honda is working at the race track.
Elaborating on those comments with DAZN, he reiterated that he did not want anyone to be sacked but also remarked about emailed being lost.
Furthermore, #93 does not believe changing riders is a panacea, having had three-time champion with Yamaha, Jorge Lorenzo, as team-mate in 2019, followed by brother Alex Marquez in 2020, then, for last season and this, Espargaro, who is on his way back to the KTM group with GasGas Factory Racing.
“It’s not lost, but it’s at a point where it would be very easy to panic,” said the older Marquez brother of Honda’s MotoGP effort.
“And when you panic, you make decisions in the heat of the moment, quick decisions that you may regret later.
“The good thing is that there is no one in the team with a blindfold on. I tell them: ‘Don’t think that changing riders is going to solve the issue.’
“It’s not a disaster. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces on the table and some of them are turned around.
“I’m not asking for anyone’s head, but in the ways of working, I get the feeling that information is being lost, very good ideas, just because… I don’t know, the emails sometimes get lost.”
Marquez has two years left on his unusually long, four-year contract which was announced in February 2020 and took effect in the following season, while Joan Mir is tipped to join him in the team in 2023, when Suzuki’s MotoGP programme is shuttered.
The San Marino Grand Prix takes place at Misano from next Friday, September 2.
