Alberto Puig stressed that the priority for the second half of the MotoGP season is to improve the performance of the RC213V not only for this year, but also to understand what will be needed for next year's championship
Alberto Puig is not a man of half words. In a year of many difficulties for Honda, the team boss is the first to admit that the performance in the 2022 MotoGP season is not up to the history and potential of the brand of the golden wing.
In a championship marked by yet another withdrawal of Marc Márquez, who had to undergo a fourth surgery on his right arm - still because of the fracture he suffered in the opening of the 2020 season - and the difficulties of Pol Espargaró, Álex Márquez and Takaaki Nakagami in extracting performance from the RC213V, Honda finds itself at the bottom of the Constructors' World Championship, with only 85 points, 161 less than the leader Ducati.
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In the competition between the teams, the situation is not much better. The factory team is only ninth among 12 teams with 100 points, ahead only of satellite LCR, which has 69 so far. RNF Yamaha and Tech3 KTM occupy the last two places. In the World Riders' Championship, the best-positioned rider is still Marc Márquez, who, despite having lost five of the 11 races in the first part of the year, has 60 points and is 13th, with Nakagami 16th, Espargaró 17th, and Álex 18th.
Speaking to the official MotoGP website, Puig assumed that Honda does not have a good year and is racing against time to look for solutions.
"As we saw, it was not so good," Alberto assumed. "We are not in our position, we are in a lot of difficulty and we need to try to find the solutions as soon as possible for our riders. This is the only thing we are thinking about now: to try to improve our bike with any possibility and combination we can think of. That's basically it," he continued.
"I can't say more because it's a fact that we are not performing at the normal Honda level, so we will try to solve this," he stressed.
Asked what the goal is for the second half of the 2022 MotoGP season, Puig replied, "Of course, we have to improve the bike, this is probably our only goal at the moment."
"Basically, we are not thinking about anything other than improving the bike for this year, but also to understand what we need to bring for next year," he closed.
MotoGP is now on vacation and will resume on August 7 with the British GP at Silverstone.GRANDE PRÊMIO is following all the activities of the 2022 MotoGP World Championship.