Category: Auto News

Everyone has their breaking point. And everyone reacts in a different way when frustrations boil over, generally doing so in a way that is out of character. This is very much what we are seeing unfold in front of us with Marc Marquez.

It’s no secret he is losing patience with Honda. Having gone through the injury hell of his badly broken right arm in 2020 and put himself through more misery with four operations to try and get back to a competitive level, Honda hasn’t been delivering him the tools he needs.

FEATURE: The crisis point Honda has reached in MotoGP after its Mugello hell

Honda has built some bad bikes in recent years, but the current one and last year’s model are perhaps the worst of the bunch. Even through 2019 and with the 2020/2021 bike, Marquez was still competitive on them. He dominated the 2019 campaign with top two finishes in all but one of the 19 grands prix, and eased to a sixth premier class crown by 151 points, as no other HRC rider got near a podium.

Prior to his season-ending crash at Jerez, Marquez was on course to win that Spanish Grand Prix in 2020, having been left fighting from the back by an early off. And he admitted in the winter of 2022 that, had he been fit, he would have probably won the 2021 title: after all, he still scored three victories with essentially only one functioning arm.

Honda’s radical concept change for 2022 is where the problems it faces now can be traced to. With Marquez out of action for several months at the end of 2021 due to a vision problem after a training crash, development of the 2022 bike was done without his input. When he returned in pre-season testing of that year, the bike started to bite him as the shift in balance to try and find more rear grip meant he couldn’t utilise his key strength of corner-entry.

His first proper taste of the 2023 bike in Valencia (he tried a prototype at Misano in September, but had just come back from three months on the sidelines after his fourth operation) wasn’t met positively, as he said it already wasn’t good enough to fight for the title. It never really improved from there.

So far, Marquez has crashed out of all three grands prix he has started in 2023 – the first one leading to a three-round spell out with injury – and has scored just 15 points. All of those crashes have been on the front-end.

Marquez has crashed 11 times already in 2023 as of qualifying in Germany, putting him seven away from his 2022 season tally

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

The risks he is having to take to be vaguely competitive are taking a toll. While he may not publicly say anything, his inner circle is concerned about more injury problems. This weekend’s German GP does not feature Alex Rins – Honda’s only winner in 2023 – and Joan Mir, after both suffered injuries from crashes at Mugello.

Looking at the crash statistics for the season so far, Honda riders have totalled 35. Marquez has 11 for the season already, having missed three rounds, and is only seven away from his 2022 total. In 2021, he suffered 22 falls, but this was largely down to him not having strength on his right arm and shoulder to save a number of front-end moments.

Four of his 2023 spills have come in Germany – a track he has won at every year he has raced it in MotoGP – already, with three in qualifying and one on Friday. He very nearly ended up with two with a big moment going through Turn 11, his immediate reaction – giving his Honda the middle finger – telling of where his head is at now and a precursor to what happened later that day.

So far, Marquez has crashed out of all three grands prix he has started in 2023 – the first one leading to a three-round spell out with injury – and has scored just 15 points

Starting his final flying lap to try and bag a place in Q2 for qualifying, Marquez lost the front-end of his bike into Turn 1 while braking and it skittled into Johann Zarco’s Pramac Ducati. It was a sickening accident that both walked away from, but frustration clouded Marquez’s judgement.

He ran back to pitlane without checking on Zarco, which the Frenchman was not pleased about, and then later apportioned all of the blame onto the Pramac rider. While there is an argument to be made that the rider exiting the Sachsenring’s awkward pit lane should be extra vigilant for oncoming traffic, it was a racing incident.

Marquez’s crash was identical to those suffered by Fabio Quartararo, Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales at Turn 1 on Friday. Vinales’ bike came close to hitting Alex Marquez as he exited pitlane, but just missed. The Marquez/Zarco tangle was just misfortune, identical to what happened in Aragon in 2016 when Pol Espargaro crashed at Turn 2 and his bike hit Danilo Petrucci as he left pitlane.

Regardless, Marquez’s lack of empathy towards Zarco in the immediate aftermath of the crash was not befitting of an eight-time world champion and superstar athlete looked up to by millions. He did seek out Zarco in the paddock later to check on him. And, sitting from our armchairs, it’s hard to understand the adrenaline and pressure surging through a rider’s body in moments like this – not least under this new weekend format where so much emphasis is put on getting into the top 10 on Fridays. Marquez’s outburst to the media afterwards, however, was unnecessary.

Johann Zarco was unhappy with Marquez pinning the blame on him for their collision

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“I like the way Marc is riding and the way he is pushing,” Zarco noted on Friday. “He is a champion, but he is losing a bit of control when he speaks. He should think twice before speaking because just having the idea to say that it is my fault, this is not acceptable. I’m a nice guy and he can’t put the blame on me because I’m a nice guy.”

Zarco’s comment is spot on, but he could also do well to remember he found himself publicly scalded by KTM for outbursts he made about the bike during his difficult 2019 season with the Austrian marque.

The Marquez/Zarco incident led to a predictable pile-on by the masses on social media, from people claiming Marquez is always crashing, to some hilariously claiming he needs a race ban for something the absolute definition of a ‘racing incident’.

During the Mugello round, Marquez held a meeting with senior Honda management about the current dire situation it is going through in MotoGP. Repeatedly since last year he has stated that Honda is his priority, but he will look elsewhere if it can’t give him a winning bike. Time is now running out.

Marquez’s contract with Honda expires at the end of next season, and the rider market will move quickly for 2025 with all of the factory deals up for grabs. It’s unlikely he will ever find a contract as lucrative as the one he is on now, which is thought to be worth €100 million over four years.

The fact he isn’t just wobbling about on the Honda and finishing wherever is safest says a lot about how important his paycheque is to him, given the risk of injury faces every time he goes on track now.

Honda has tried to think outside of its box to get the RC213V to be more competitive, working with Kalex on chassis design. It was a small step forward when Marquez started racing it in France, but in Germany one of his bikes as the HRC-designed frame fitted. Tiny steps won’t fix a fundamentally broken bike.

With another concept change clearly needed with its 2024 bike to stop its skid, Honda is running out of time to convince Marquez to stay beyond next season. As the weight of the situation continues to grind away a rider who, when the bike is simply just manageable, is still the best on the grid, how much longer before it breaks him?

Honda needs a radical change to reverse its fortunes if it has any hope of convincing Marquez to stay beyond 2024

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Karun Chandhok has had a lot of team-mates in his eclectic career, but one name stands out when it comes to choosing his favourite. Bruno Senna immediately comes to mind for the Indian and not just because the duo ended up as colleagues in GP2, Formula 1 and Formula E.

“From the first GP2 test we did together at Jerez [in 2007], we just got on really well,” says the Sky F1 pundit, who raced alongside Ayrton Senna’s nephew at iSport in the 2008 GP2 Asia series as a prelude to contesting the regular season. “Of course, we wanted to beat each other, but we were very open.

“It was a really enjoyable year. We’d arrive at a race weekend and we’d start with two different programmes, compare data and it was all very open sharing information.

“It was funny because I was always very open about the fact that Alain Prost was my childhood hero and I became really good friends with all of Bruno’s family.”

Senna won that first contest in Asia, finishing fifth in the standings to Chandhok’s 13th. Both finished on the podium at Monaco and Hockenheim, as Senna finished runner-up in the regular season to Giorgio Pantano. But the next time they teamed up they faced much bigger challenges. Chandhok joined Senna at the troubled HRT operation which took over Adrian Campos’s entry as they both stepped up to F1 in 2010, Chandhok directly from GP2 and Senna after a year in sportscars racing for ORECA.

PLUS: How HRT made it onto the F1 2010 grid

“We were in this rollercoaster of chaos together,” says Chandhok. “We were a very close unit, with his manager Chris Goodwin, my father and Bruno’s sister Bianca.

“So many days it felt like the five of us trying to push the team forward and trying to find where the whole project was going.”

Senna and Chandhok first raced together in GP2 for iSport in 2008

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

Perhaps surprisingly, given HRT’s lack of pace and results (14th was the best finish of 2010), Chandhok believes there was potential.

“When they had the fallout with Dallara that was really painful because when we went there to do the seat-fitting, we saw on the CAD drawings and in the wind tunnel they had 60 points of downforce they were going to bring to the car for Barcelona [round five],” says Chanhok, who was replaced after 10 races. “And that would have put us with the Toro Rossos, in the midfield.

“When you look at what Dallara did with Haas, that’s where they arrived. There was so much unfulfilled potential in that project because everyone fell out, it got political and it just got messy.”

Throughout it all, the working relationship between Chandhok and Senna remained strong. Having similar driving styles was also a bonus.

“I would feel confident taking Bruno’s set-up from free practice to qualifying if he found something that worked, and vice versa” Karun Chandhok

“We wanted similar things from the car,” says the 39-year-old. “That was useful when we went testing – generally, what worked for one worked for the other.

“I would feel confident taking Bruno’s set-up from free practice to qualifying if he found something that worked, and vice versa.”

Interestingly, Chandhok feels their relative strengths changed over time: “In GP2 he was generally a better qualifier than me, when we had races where we had to do tyre management I was generally pretty good.

Insight: Karun Chandhok picks his favourite car

“When we got to F1 it swapped around a little bit. He’d had a year out in sportscars and a couple of big shunts, so when he came back I think he’d lost a little bit of the edge from qualifying.

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“I don’t think there was a clear trend, he was better than me at energy management in Formula E.”

Their final season together was also a tricky one. They raced for Mahindra in the inaugural season of Formula E, with Senna finishing 10th and Chandhok 17th.

Chandhok reckons his strengths relative to Senna evolved over time

Photo by: James Moy

Wadoux will share the #88 AF Corse ORECA LMP2 with her current team-mate in the World Endurance Championship, Luis Perez Companc, and Ferrari Hypercar driver Nicklas Nielsen for the six-hour race on 25 June.

The car is making its first IMSA appearance since the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona, where Nielsen shared duties with Julien Canal, Francois Perrodo and Matthieu Vaxiviere.

It will mark a first LMP2 outing for Wadoux since the final round of the 2022 WEC season, which she contested for Richard Mille Racing.

She switched to the GTE Am class this year upon being signed by Ferrari, joining Perez Companc and Alessio Rovera.

Wadoux suffered a spectacular early exit from last weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hours as she aquaplaned off the track at barely abated speed at the Porsche Curves during a heavy rain shower, but walked away from the incident unharmed.

 

Elsewhere on the entry list for the Watkins Glen IMSA race, Jota Porsche driver Will Stevens is joining the Tower Motorsports LMP2 squad, taking the seat that was occupied by Louis Deletraz for the most recent race at Laguna Seca last month.

Deletraz is otherwise engaged as he joins the Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport squad in the top GTP class, sharing the team’s Acura ARX-06 with regular pair Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor.

The only other GTP team running a third driver at the Glen is Cadillac outfit Action Express Racing, with Jack Aitken returning to partner Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims.

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Usual bronze Francois Heriau suffered a back injury in testing in the run-up to Le Mans and was unable to take up his seat at Graff Racing for the centenary running of the race.

There is a new entry in the GTD Pro class in the form of the AF Corse #61 Ferrari 296 GT3 that will be shared by factory driver Miguel Molina, Simon Mann and Ulysse de Pauw.

A total of 57 cars set to do battle at The Glen across all five classes, with nine each in GTP, LMP2 and GTD Pro, 10 in LMP3 and a bumper 20-car entry in GTD.

The Blue Oval announced today the formation of a full factory Dakar programme using a T1+ version of the Ranger, which will be run in collaboration with Neil Woolridge Motorsport in South Africa and M-Sport in the UK.

The programme will effectively be launched in stages, with an existing NWM-built Ranger, powered by a 3.5-litre Ecoboost engine and based on the previous generation model, further developed for the 2024 Dakar.

That will be an exploratory effort at the famous rally raid, rather than an effort aimed at victory.

An all-new Ranger will then be developed by Ford Performance, NWM and M-Sport for the 2025 event, where Ford hopes to be in contention for the Dakar crown.

What will power the new Ranger T1+ is yet to be revealed.

“We know it’s a big endeavour that we’re taking on here, and not something where we can just show up and be successful,” said Ford Performance boss Mark Rushbrook.

Ford Ranger Raptor for 2024 Dakar Rally

Photo by: Ford

“We’re certainly doing our homework with that. Neil Woolridge has an existing truck based on the previous-generation Raptor, and we are taking the truck to compete in the January 2024 effort at Dakar.

“It’s a real test of the truck, so we can understand, what it takes in the truck to be successful. But also half the battle, maybe more, is the team logistics and execution, and going there in 2024 we need to learn about the logistics, the bivouac, picking up and moving almost every single day, what trucks and what support is necessary to be successful there.

“In January 2024 it is very much a ‘finish and learn’ effort.

“In parallel as we’ve been testing and preparing for the last nine months, we’ve been starting the design of an all-new truck. Our plan is to have an all-new test truck in the early part of 2024 that we will then continue testing and developing with the intent to go back in January 2025 with a ‘let’s compete and win’ effort.”

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M-Sport, meanwhile, has been targeting a Dakar effort with Ford and NWM for some time. 

“The Dakar Rally is truly among the pinnacle of global off -road racing events,” said Malcolm Wilson, M-Sport managing director.

“We’ve achieved great success over the years with Ford in FIA WRC rally racing and can’t wait to apply this same level of focus, energy and effort to competing with Ranger in Dakar.”

A production-based Ford Ranger off-road racer, built and developed in Australia and backed by the factory, has enjoyed success in recent months, including class wins at the Baja 1000 and, just last Monday, the Finke Desert Race.

That car will now be mothballed following its Finke success.

Dennis enjoyed a strong showing in the Indonesian double header, qualifying on the front row for the first time since the season opener in Mexico City before going on to finish second in each of the two races.

This made him the second highest points-scorer over the course of the weekend, only behind Race 2 winner Maximilian Guenther of Maserati.

With five races remaining in Formula E’s first Gen3 season, Dennis finds himself right behind Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein in the standings, having trailed erstwhile leader Nick Cassidy by 25 points going into Jakarta.

The British driver hailed Andretti for delivering a big step-up in one lap performance in Indonesia, allowing him to qualify up front and score the big points he needed in order to strengthen his bid for a maiden title.

“Honestly, just a big thanks to the team,” said Dennis. “That’s the biggest thing, [just] how much effort we put in from here to the previous races over qualifying.

“It’s really shown and it’s really paid off because qualifying in the past few races hasn’t mattered all that much but this weekend it’s been crucial.

“It really helps to bring my championship back alive.

“We will see whatever happens in Portland. It’s completely different from how most FE circuits are, very fast, very flowing.

“There will be lots of overtaking, similar to Berlin and yeah, just some time off now before we go again in a few weeks.”

Another driver who was an outside bet for the Formula E title coming to Jakarta was Jaguar’s Mitch Evans, who had lost a big chunk of points in Hyderabad when his team-mate Sam Bird took him out of the race.

Jaguar was unusually off the pace in Jakarta, with neither the factory team nor customer squad Envision featuring at the front, with Evans’ misery compounded by another crash with Bird in the opening race.

Jake Dennis, Andretti Autosport

Photo by: Andreas Beil

But he bounced back from the incident to finish on the podium behind Guenther and Dennis in the second leg of the round, keeping a train of cars behind on the tight confines of the Jakarta track.

Evans now faces a 25-point deficit in the standings, with Wehrlein, Dennis and Envision’s Nick Cassidy all in front of him, but the Kiwi isn’t ruling himself out of the title fight yet.

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Asked if he felt his title challenge was still on, Evans replied: “For sure. There are still five races left, so loads of points.

“It’s a shame we didn’t execute a better weekend. Also, could have been worse off the back of Saturday’s [race] in terms of pace, [but] I will look at the bright side. We are 100% still on this.

“I’m sure when we go back to other tracks we should be more competitive and back to our usual pace. So hopefully this was a bit of a one-off.

“We soon need to work out why, because we will be coming back next year etc. Strange but grateful for the points.”