Repsol Honda Team Manager Alberto Puig has declared that the Japanese marque needs “three steps” in order to make its way back towards the top of MotoGP.

Honda finished last in this year’s constructors’ championship, 44 points (one point shy of the equivalent of a full round) behind Suzuki, which had announced its impending exit from the category early in the season.

The manufacturer which won MotoGP’s triple crown (riders’, teams’, and constructors’ titles) as recently as 2019 was also the only one in 2022 to not win even a single race.

Ominously, its talisman, Marc Marquez, stated after this year’s post-season test at Valencia that Honda was experiencing “More or less the same problems.”

He also declared that it will “have to take two” steps over the northern winter if it is to fight for the championship next year.

When that was put to Puig, he went even further than that.

“And I am asking for three steps,” responded the Spaniard with typical bluntness in a Honda Racing Corporation review of the Valencia round and test.

“We need three steps to be on a good path, heading in the right direction.

“Certainly in Japan they have been working very hard, there is no doubt.

“It’s clear and we know it, but unfortunately we still could not find the correct direction.

“All our engineers, not only in Japan, but also in Europe, are working and trying.

“We trust them and we hope we can meet our expectations and deliver a bike in Sepang [first official test of 2023].”

Both Repsol Honda and satellite team LCR will have a Suzuki refugee next year, with 2020 champion Joan Mir going to the former and last-start winner Alex Rins to the latter, where he will join Takaaki Nakagami.

Valencia on the Tuesday after the last grand prix of 2022 was thus Mir’s and Rins’ first chance to ride the RC213V, and they wound up 18th- and 20th-fastest respectively, while Marquez was 13th.

“It’s difficult for a new rider to gain a deep and precise understanding of the bike with just one day of riding,” noted Puig.

“But they tried, for sure what they found was very different to what they are used to and now they will deeply analyse everything they did.”

While private testing has continued in recent days, the next activity on the calendar is the Shakedown Test, for test riders and rookies, at Sepang on February 5-7 and the Official Test at the Malaysian Grand Prix venue on February 10-12.