As is customary before each Grand Prix, the Repsol Honda Team released a prior press release with an assessment of the weekend and the impressions of its riders. On this occasion, however, the statement issued speaks of “five important days in Misano for the Repsol Honda team”, which includes the two crucial test days to be held on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.
In these tests, decisive to face the evolution of the RC213V prototype for 2023, Honda hopes to have the presence of Marc Márquez, in full recovery from the intervention he underwent three months ago in the United States. Although no one doubts the rider’s presence at these important rehearsals, the team continues to maintain suspense.
Márquez , who has already had surgery four times on his right arm that was injured in July 2020 in Jerez, received the go-ahead from the doctors on Wednesday of last week to start training normally. The runner has uploaded to his social networks photos in the gym, the athletics track and working on a road bike and a mountain bike, and it is expected that he will soon do so at the handlebars of a street sports motorcycle on some circuit to reconfirm that the bone has completely welded and withstands the force necessary to ride a motorcycle.
“A weekend of racing and a two-day test in Misano offer Pol Espargaró and Stefan Bradl five days of activity on the track to fine-tune the Honda RC213V,” explains the Repsol statement, in which no mention is made. about the eight-time champion’s presence at rehearsals.
In Honda they assure that they will respect the decision of the pilot and that, for the moment, they do not know if he will be present next week in Misano, although the team hopes he will be, even if it is only to make some trips to the track and be able, minimally, to score the course of next year’s prototype development.
As Alberto Puig explained in an interview on DAZN, “the Misano test is crucial, since it contains the information to make the bike that the riders will test in the Valencia test”, which is held after the end of the season and in which both Márquez himself, already recovered, and the new signings Joan Mir, who will ride in the official team, and Alex Rins, who will ride in the LCR-Honda, both from Suzuki, may already be present.
