Honda curious to hear Ducati strengths from Lorenzo

HRC technical manager Takeo Yokoyama admits he is curious to hear how the RC213V compares to the Desmosedici, from 2019 signing Jorge Lorenzo.

Although Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez is on the brink of clinching his fifth MotoGP title, the Ducati is currently considered the best all-round bike on the grid, with three wins each for Lorenzo and team-mate Andrea Dovizioso.

Dovizioso is on course to finish as title runner-up for the second year in a row, while Lorenzo – a triple MotoGP champion with Yamaha – only hit race-winning form after he had agreed the shock move to Honda, where he will form a ‘dream team’ line-up alongside Marquez.

“[Lorenzo] is a champion, he has ridden many different bikes in the past and he has been always fast. So I think he can adapt to our bike,” Yokoyama told the official MotoGP website.

“I’m really curious to hear [what he will say] about Ducati’s strong points, what is Honda’s strong points – because that’s what he will say.”

Perhaps one of Yokoyama’s first questions to Lorenzo will be, what is inside the mysterious ‘salad box’ and how is it used?

Turning to his own machine, the Japanese engineer explained Honda will be happy to make small design differences to help accommodate Lorenzo next season.

“We will not make a completely different bike. We will not make a bike to the ‘right’ for Marc and to the ‘left’ for Jorge. But slightly different is no problem for us,” he said.

Yokoyama revealed that one of his main concerns in terms of making the Lorenzo-Honda partnership a success is the RCV’s lack of stability.

“Maybe one of the things that I’m a little worried he would struggle with is the stability of the bike. I think you can see from TV that the Honda bike is many times shaking, dancing, jumping,” he said.

“Probably, he’s not the guy who likes to fight with the unstable bike and from our side I guess we need to make the bike a little more stable than we have now. But also from his side, maybe he needs to adapt to a little more unstable bike.

“If we can do this, and if he can do this, I think we will be successful.”

Yokoyama also spoke about how exciting it is for HRC engineers to work with the relentless style of Marquez, famous for his extreme saves.

“When he’s riding like that, on the limit, what we see on the telemetry – as engineers – we are addicted!” he said. “Some riders don’t push to the limit when they don’t feel comfortable, but Marc will always show us the limit of the bike.”