Motorsport.com reported during the weekend of the last French Grand Prix that, that same Friday, the riders who attended the safety commission expressed their concern about the salary reduction policy with their drivers that some brands have adopted, such as Ducati and KTM.
The range goes from about 100,000 euros that a rookie can earn, up to 20 million that, it seems, appear in Márquez’s own contract. The boy from Cervera (Lleida) signed his agreement with Honda before the outbreak of the Covid and breaking his arm in that accident in Jerez, in 2020. His link with the brand with the golden wing, which expires at the end of 2024, is absolutely outside the scales that currently move.
Despite this, the Catalan recognized this Friday, in Mugello, that this better paid status does not exempt him from the responsibility of looking after the interests of his colleagues, a circumstance supported by the fact that he was the one who, at Le Mans, took the subject in the ‘safety’.
“I think many drivers are racing with salaries that are too low. I don’t think it’s fair that there is such a difference. It is true that the ‘megacracks’ have to win more, but we all risk our lives in the same way,” agreed the Spaniard.
“We discussed it in a safety commission, and I was the one who put the issue on the table. Surely it would be better for me to remain silent, because I am the one who earns the most money. But there cannot be pilots who roll at 350 per hour and earn what some they are paying in MotoGP”, added Márquez, in favor of creating a kind of union that defends the riders but without daring to say how he would like it to be articulated, or who his spokesperson would be: “I think it must be someone who is no longer in a hurry”
The multi-champion claimed a few weeks ago to have realized that, in his current situation, thinking about fighting for the title is somewhat unrealistic. Probably as a result of that conclusion, Honda works in a somewhat different way this weekend, in Italy, at least in the two free sessions on Friday.
In them, the #93 tested a new chassis with the intention of beginning to elucidate in which direction to go with a view to 2023. After the two practices, it finished 12th in the combined classification, a result that provisionally leaves it out of the group that is guaranteed the pass to the second sieve of the timed (Q2).
“Today we work in a different way to understand the bike with a view to the future. I was working with two different bikes. The idea is to try to make the bike turn better, in less space. Honda is working hard,” Márquez stressed.
