Despite the striking mistake he made at the last stop on the calendar, in Assen, more than a month ago – he fell in the early stages of the race – the forcefulness that the Frenchman had shown until then placed him in an almost unattainable plane for the rest of the rivals, who saw him too far away.
“The problem is that Fabio is faster than me on Sundays,” admitted Aleix Espargaró at the Sachsenring, the test before the one in the Netherlands. The Aprilia rider occupies second place in the general classification, with 21 points less than the Diablo , and the solvency that he has shown in his best season in MotoGP places him as the only one who could be in a position to challenge the Yamaha rider for the crown. Third in the table is Johann Zarco, but the Pramac man ‘s disadvantage with respect to his compatriot now exceeds two grand prizes (58 points). Pecco Bagnaia, for his part, is still further away – he is fourth, 66 points behind Fabio Quartararo – so that only a generalized debacle of those who preceded him could give the Ducati rider any chance.
With this panorama, Honda concentrates much of the attention if we take into account the hole in which the brand with the golden wing is stuck, which is dragging the worst streak in its history, a feeling validated by the numbers: it appears in the last position of the statistic reserved for manufacturers and its best placed rider is Marc Márquez (13th), despite having missed five of the eleven races held so far.
After undergoing the fourth operation on the right humerus two months ago, the recovery of the arm seems to be on the right track, or at least that is what is intuited through the content that he himself posts on social networks, training. Honda hopes to see you on the bike before the World Championship puts the lock, in Valencia, at the beginning of November, but above all it wants to have your opinion in the tests that must be carried out before winter. That Márquez can take part in the training sessions after the test in Misano , in a month, seems difficult, while it is much more feasible to see him in those that will be held in Cheste , after the last event of this 2022.
Waiting to see how the #93 evolves, the most striking aspect concerns the contracts that must be signed in the workshop of the official Honda team – LCR announced the hiring of Alex Rins and it is expected that he will soon do the same with Ai Ogura in Takaaki Nakagami’s position. On the one hand, there is the arrival of Joan Mir as Márquez’s partner, an issue that has lasted longer than the Majorcan would have wanted after Suzuki ‘s decision to abandon the championship at the end of the year, because it has placed the Tokyo manufacturer in the position of strength in the talks with #36.
At the same time, HRC must also renew the contract that binds Repsol as the main sponsor of its reference team, something that a few months ago could be taken for granted but that is also taking longer than expected.
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