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HONDA RACING INFORMATION
2013 FIM Roadracing World Championship Grand Prix Round 17 of 18, Japanese GP, Twin Ring Motegi
25-27 October 2013
Preview: MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3
HONDA GOES HOME AS TITLE TENSION RISES
The Repsol Honda team leads the cream of the MotoGP crop to the company’s own Twin Ring Motegi circuit this weekend – still in command of an increasingly tense World Championship battle as the series accelerates towards a thrilling conclusion.
The Japanese GP is the second-last of 18 rounds that have spanned the world, and Repsol Honda RC213V rider Marc Marquez leads the chase by 18 points, with 50 points still available for the rider who wins the next two races.
Class rookie Marquez has won six times in his first season in the senior class, but after a costly disqualification on a technicality in an extraordinary Australian GP on Sunday his chance of adding a seventh was abruptly terminated.
As he pulled into the pits in frustration in Australia, a valuable victory went to his closest rival Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha), giving him an equal number of race wins.
Second Repsol Honda RC213V rider Dani Pedrosa is the other big winner of the season so far, with three victories – the three Spanish stars have between them won every round but one this year, in a battle where each has had a spell in the lead of the championship table.
Marquez’s hiatus means that both Pedrosa and Lorenzo have a least a mathematical chance of stealing the crown that seemed destined to make him the youngest-ever World Champion; and the extraordinary sequence of events in Australia have ramped up the excitement for the race at Honda’s spectacular motor-sport facility.
The other riders of Honda’s class-leading V4 MotoGP prototype go to Japan with widely differing fortunes. German former Moto2 World Champion Stefan Bradl (Team LCR Honda RC213V) missed the last races through injury, and is fighting to be declared fit to ride in Japan.
Spaniard Alvaro Bautista (Team FUN&GO Honda Gresini RC213V) aims to continue a run of strong results that have moved him past the German in the championship.Marquez took over from Pedrosa at the eighth round in Germany, as both the Honda rider and Lorenzo suffered injury set-backs, each missing one race and struggling unfit at the subsequent events on either side of the summer break. The reigning Moto2 and former 125cc champion took a classic four wins in a row to build up a lead that seemed almost unassailable – until the misfortune of zero points last weekend.
Until that race, the 20-year-old had been on the podium at every GP but one, crashing out in Italy while in a strong second place – a sensational debut in motorcycle racing’s top category.
Adapting almost instantly to the powerful and demanding RC213V, his first win came at only the second race of the year, at the new COTA circuit in Texas.Since then, he has worked on refining his technique and broadening his portfolio of exceptional talent.
Downfall in Australia came in an unprecedented race, where major concerns over tyre life on the abrasive new Phillip Island track surface triggered a change in the rules, with the dry race running under wet-race “flag-to-flag” rules, with a compulsory pit stop mid-way through the shortened event to switch to a second bike with fresh rubber. A misunderstanding of the hastily drafted and then redrafted rules saw Marquez pit one lap too late, rejoining with the leaders … only for his challenge to be cut short by black-flag disqualification. He will be fighting to make up for it at Motegi, where he won the
Moto2 race last year, and the 125cc race in 2010, both in his championship years.Team-mate Pedrosa – Motegi winner for the past two years – has amply demonstrated his own return to full strength and race-winning form over the last races, including a clear and dominant win in Malaysia two weekends ago, at the first of three back-to-back flyaway races. He was challenging for victory in Australia as well, until set-up issues with his second bike meant he had to settle for second behind Lorenzo.
Pedrosa broke his collarbone before the German race, missing that but returning bravely one week later for a heroic fifth place at the very physical Laguna Seca circuit in the USA. Choosing natural healing rather than quick-fix surgery made the next races an ordeal, but the 28-year-old gritted his teeth and added two more second places at the next two rounds.
Back to full strength and gaining ground in the title chase, freak misfortune at round 14 in Aragon meant Pedrosa took a second zero-points score through no fault of his own. A light contact with Marquez severed a vital electronic control wire, triggering an almost immediate crash.
Pedrosa’s aim for the final races has been clear from the strength of his performance, and it will be the same at Motegi, where he seeks a hat-trick of wins at Honda’s circuit. Dani was on the rostrum also in 2008 and 2009, and won in both
250 and 125 classes, where he was three times World Champion.Bautista also has a strong record at the track.
Third last year, he won in the 250 class in 2009, was second the year before; and second also on a
125 in 2006, his championship year in the junior class.Bautista has a special role: exclusively race-developing Showa suspension and Nissin brakes, made by Japanese companies associated with Honda. He has reported strong progress in this valuable task in the latter half of the 2013 season, and proved it on the results sheets – never lower than seventh in the last ten races, including two fourth places, and a very close fifth last weekend in Australia.
Bradl broke his ankle in practice in Malaysia, when an innocuous spill went bad as he caught his foot in the trackside Astroturf. The 2011 Moto2 champion underwent immediate surgery, and bravely attempted to race at the next weekend’s Australian round, but was ruled out after struggling in the first practice.
Since then, he has been undergoing twice-daily physiotherapy sessions, and while he will not be at 100 percent, he hopes to be strong enough to give a good account of himself at Motegi.
Australian Bryan Staring (Team GO&FUN Gresini FTR
Honda) – the only Honda rider in the
production-based CRT category – has a particular ambition for the Motegi race: to erase his own memories of Australia, where he too was disqualified. In his first GP season, Staring has been learning new circuits as well as adapting to the Honda CBR1000RR-powered racer, and aims to add to his points score in Japan.The tension was taken out of an increasingly exciting all-Honda-powered Moto2 championship when long-time points leader Scott Redding (Marc VDS Racing Team Kalex) crashed in practice and sustained a broken wrist. He underwent surgery that same evening, but will not be able to take part in the Japanese GP.
This handed the lead to his pursuer Pol Espargaro (Tuenti HP 40 Pons Kalex), who won a shortened sprint race in Australia to put one hand on the title. He had arrived in Australia nine points behind Redding after a sustained almost season-long chase – the gap was 47 points after the fourth round. He goes to Japan 16 points clear of his absent rival, and 36 clear of his last remaining challenger, team-mate Esteve Rabat.
Australia was Spaniard Espargaro’s fifth win in the Moto2 class, where close and reliable racing is guaranteed, with all competitors supplied with identical race-tuned Honda CBR600 engines. Rabat lost ground finishing eighth after running off the track.
Swiss former 125 champion Thomas Luthi
(Interwetten Paddock Moto2 Suter) was a close second in the Phillip Island thriller, inches ahead of German GP winner Jordi Torres (Aspar Team Moto2), with the top five over the line in just over one second.In the smallest Moto3 class, where Honda-powered machines face rivals from other factories, the title is still wide open, with the top three riders – Luis Salom, Alex Rins and Maverick Vinales (all KTM) – making it an all-Spanish affair.
Top among the Honda hordes is Australian Jack Miller (Caretta Technology – RTG FTR Honda). The teenager’s title battle with experienced French rider Alexis Masbou (Ongetta-Rivacold FTR Honda) got a fillip at his home GP, where he was a superlative fifth in a tight group of eight riders. Masbou was tenth. Miller lies seventh overall, now 16 points ahead of Masbou: the rivalry between the pair will be intense at Motegi.
Not far behind is rising Italian star Romano Fenati (San Carlo Team Italia FTR Honda), lying 13th overall in a big battle for tenth spot, with five riders spanned by 11 points.
The Twin Ring road-racing circuit, in mountainous country some 120 km north-east of Tokyo, is part of a much larger complex, and is integrated with a banked oval circuit … uniquely the MotoGP bikes pass under the banking to the countryside beyond and return to the start-finish line via two dramatic underpasses.
With 14 corners, eight to the right, the first part of the circuit features especially hard braking and acceleration round U-shaped bends, and there is more of the same as well as faster corners out beyond the first underpass.
MotoGP first ran at Motegi in 1999, and there have been 14 races there since, including four Pacific GPs as a second Japanese round in addition to Suzuka. Since 2004 it has been the permanent home of the Japanese GP. Honda has six wins out of 14, two more than the next-best manufacturer.
The complex also features kart, oval dirt-track and trials courses and driver-training facilities plus the Honda Collection Hall, where not only historic Honda racing and production cars and motorcycles but also important rival machines star in an internationally renowned collection.
Honda MotoGP Rider Quotes
Repsol Honda rider Marc Marquez says:
“Obviously I’m disappointed after Phillip Island, but these things can happen. The important thing is that once again, we showed we were there for the fight and were competitive. Now we must put it behind us and concentrate on Motegi. Track conditions can vary quite a lot and we will work hard on the set up in terms of the hard acceleration and braking, which is an area we have improved now. We will work hard from the beginning, following our normal programme and push 100 percent to recover after Australia.”Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa says:
“It was a strange race in Australia, but I’m really pleased with my team who did a great job and we took a good second place. I always look forward to going to Motegi. It’s a big race for Honda and I enjoy the track. It’s the final of three fly-away races and we’re all tired, so it’s important to keep the concentration. The track has a lot of strong braking and accelerating and we must find a good set up for the braking stability and to get good traction out of the corners.”GO&FUN Honda Gresini rider Alvaro Bautista says:
“We could never have thought on the night before the race at Phillip Island that we would be moving on to Japan with such a strong result under our belts. Our bike wasn’t working with the hard tyre that we were forced to use but thanks to an incredible job for the team we managed to salvage something and I am delighted with the result – it was just a shame that once again we missed out on the podium by such a small margin.
We have to try to make up for that disappointment this weekend at Motegi, where we managed to finish on the podium last year. With the progress we have made lately and with this being Honda’s home track I think we can close the gap to the front even more. We have good memories and good data from a fantastic weekend at Motegi last year and even though the level is higher this season we will do our best to repeat the result. We need to stay focused on finding a good setting for the bike from the first session and then hopefully I can enjoy myself. Brakes will be really important at this track and we will do our best to make sure we don’t have problems in this crucial area.”LCR Honda rider Stefan Bradl says:
“As you can imagine, I will try to race at Motegi. On Friday in Australia I was ruled unfit; now I have another medical check on Thursday. I have been having two physio sessions each day with the Clinica Mobile staff, so I will have them to thank if I pass, as I expect. I am off crutches now, and though for sure I will not be at 100 percent, I want to race. Compared with Phillip Island Motegi has a lot of hard braking and slower corners, so I know it will be a tough race.”GO&FUN Honda Gresini rider Bryan Staring says:
“I am still angry about the mistake at my home race, which was ended by a black flag after I failed to pit on the correct lap. It’s inexcusable and I am doubly determined to make up for it at Motegi this weekend. It is a tough track because of all the hard braking zones and it won’t be easy for us to adapt. Anyway, we only have two races left now until the end of the championship and I am determined to finish it in the best possible way.”
Honda Moto2 Rider Quotes
Tuenti HP 40 Pons rider Pol Espargaro says:
“In Japan we must try to be as fast as possible and aim to win the race and get the crown there.
And enjoy the race ... We have to see. All my life I have dreamed of being World Champion.
Maybe it’s the place to make the dream come true.”Marc VDS Racing Team rider Scott Redding says:
“Obviously I am very disappointed about the crash but I have to remain positive. I lost the rear in qualifying and my wrist was broken before I hit the floor, so it was bad luck but I can’t change what happened. The operation was a success and I want to thank Dr Andrew Oppy for doing a great job. I’ve got a plate and six screws and now all I can do is work to get myself back on the bike as quickly as possible. I’ve not lost the championship yet. I’ll be in Japan to support the team, but it will hard watching rather than racing.”Tuenti HP 40 Pons rider Tito Rabat says:
“Motegi: I love the track, and there, last year, I got the first podium with this team. So, I’ve great memories. But I’m so much disappointed with what happened in Australia, so I am really focused to enjoy myself and give my best in Japan and Valencia.”
Honda Moto3 Rider Quotes
Caretta Technology – RTG rider Jack Miller says:
“Motegi is a good track for me. I always try to be the best guy on the brakes, and there’s a lot of very heavy braking. You can make up a lot of time there on the brakes. We wait to see.”Ongetta-Rivacold rider Alexis Masbou says:
“Motegi is a circuit where I didn’t always do well – up and down with the results. But I like it, and it’s Honda’s track. So it would be great if I could be the best Honda. I think it will be more difficult for us than Phillip Island, because it wants more acceleration. But we have already seen other tracks that were said to favour our opponents but where, at the end of the day, we have had a say. Sepang, for example.”San Carlo Team Italia rider Romano Fenati says:
“Last year I got tenth place, but I crashed both Friday and Saturday, so I was not at my best ... I’ve been told that the weather will be poor, which can make for interesting chances. It’s not a circuit that suits us perfectly, but this is a strange championship. We will see.”
