That's actually a sensible season to me, if you want to go silly. Miguel stays at RNF with the promise of a factory ride in 2025 and to Repsol goes.....
Honda has the resources to do what needs to be done, they need a few strategic hires and things could change faster than we think.
The problem is not resources, it is Honda not listening to riders. Rossi said it, Casey said it and now Marc's actions also say it.
That is not totally fair to say. Yamaha already had a bike that was improving and I believe they debuted the flat plane crank engine in 2003. The issue was, they were throwing many concepts at the bike and not focusing on one. Rossi tried I think 5 different engine configs at his first test and then said he wanted to go with the big bang concept, which they then focused on solely. Rossi and Burgess famously said they would get the Ducati fixed in 80 seconds, but we know how that went.
They need a different engine design to go with the control ECU, Nakamoto knew the engine needed the bespoke software around which the engine was designed and foresaw this when the control ECU was mooted, and as Lex has said previously they are probably also not keen on going all out with aero etc which is irrelevant to their road bikes in the dying days of this formula. They also had a few external pressures on their resources like their F1 effort and a pandemic. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Ducati got the benefit of concessions followed by a freeze either imo.
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The speculation is they need a new engine to do so, the control ecu cannot do what their ecu did. Their engine was designed to be smoothed by their ecu, the current ecu cannot is my understanding.
This. The engine built is a monster and could only be made usable with bespoke electronics that were congruent with the build. HRC lost most because there engine was/is brutal.
Works for Ducati apparently. The only reason I can think of why Morbidelli was hired by Pramac is his Italian citizenship.
It also shouldn't be forgotten that that .... happened a ....... DECADE ago. WTF people, quit giving HRC a pass for being the GOP of MGP - "we cannot deal with change, yes we got screwed, but we are gonna whinge about it for a decade and do absolutely NOTHING to adapt. TWATS.
Certainly you pay your money and you take your choice, but I doubt Honda have lost all technical competence or that their culture no longer allows success, their endeavours in F1 haven’t gone too badly. If they have chosen F1 over motogp that is indeed their problem, but the first year of the control ecu was actually 2016, the control ecu was from Ducati’s pre-existing supplier, Ducati did get significant concessions, there was a complete engine freeze for a number years iirc, and there was a Covid pandemic which I do recall correctly. Sure Honda shouldn’t whine if they have chosen not to expend resources, not that I have heard them do so, Nakamoto said the control ecu would screw them beforehand. Also pretty hard when your lead rider with the idiosyncratic riding style is basically down for 3 years, not that his input would necessarily have helped, but sure no one made them hire Puig who immediately fired Pedrosa who one would think could have helped them develop their bike.
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