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I wouldn't own a VW either though. Don't strike me as too reliable.😬

Apparently high service costs. Wouldn’t own one either.
Maybe... I drive a 2000 Passat 1.8 petrol with 450,000 kms. It's a tank. Cheap to service, even in a country where VW has never sold cars 🤣

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Completely different principles making things go up instead of down 😅 but I get your point.

If Honda feel that MotoGP has no relevance to their road bikes then why don't they just quit? It seems silly that they would waste millions of dollars a year on something they don't get any value from.
Simply, they are too proud to lose face after being a major force in racing for so many years. I don't doubt, they will, eventually, make a come-back. It's only been a handful of seasons. Look how many years Ducati stuck around before they achieved real parity. Honda knows, as well as everybody else has known for years, that the win on Sunday, sell on Monday paradigm, is dead. It's not about practical stuff like money. It's national pride. Unless the Japanese economy takes a cavernous dive, I think Honda will keep at it.
 
My dad owns a 2015 Golf station wagon and it's already got rust on the doors.
Also, that tiny 110 hp engine sucks.
Afriend of ours had a golf and repetitive motor problems, including a failed cylinder head. Got rid of the pos before it sent her broke.
A bloke on another forum I'm on had to keep spending thousands on the DSG clutch. An expensive regular maintenance item apparently 🤷‍♂️
Dunno all brands can gave problems though.
Cars sh it me. I prefer something cheap and reliable if possible.
 
Simply, they are too proud to lose face after being a major force in racing for so many years. I don't doubt, they will, eventually, make a come-back. It's only been a handful of seasons. Look how many years Ducati stuck around before they achieved real parity. Honda knows, as well as everybody else has known for years, that the win on Sunday, sell on Monday paradigm, is dead. It's not about practical stuff like money. It's national pride. Unless the Japanese economy takes a cavernous dive, I think Honda will keep at it.
I agree. And this is what I point out to people saying that Marquez should have stuck with Honda. It took Ducati 6 years to get back to winning after Stoner left and it involved a complete rework of the race team and a new technical chief. Honda have so far shown no inclination of that massive overhaul apart from a brief 'hey wanna come work here?' to Gigi.

Yamaha are the same...nationalistic pride is well put.
 
But birdbird says the honda is a great bike.
birdbird is clutching onto history. Honda's strategy worked well in the past but things have changed and its clear that currently Ducati's strategy is working the best. Perhaps in the future we will see Ducati's strategy no longer working as someone has worked out a better way to do things.

KTM's frame is a good example of how you need to change your strategy. They started with a round tube steel trellis frame with might of been using the engine as a stressed member and after a couple of iterations were on a square box steel frame that didn't use the engine as a stressed member but the change to not using the engine probably happened before that frame. Now they are using a carbon frame which means that the MotoGP frame no longer has a direct link to retail sales.

We have seen some changes with Honda, there was a time they didn't want to reverse the crank when clearly it was working for the other manufacturers and recently Honda was quick to adopt the tail section wings after they appeared on a competitor, I get the impression that they are going away from the "Honda must do things differently" attitude of the past
 
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We have seen some changes with Honda, there was a time they didn't want to reverse the crank when clearly it was working for the other manufacturers and recently Honda was quick to adopt the tail section wings after they appeared on a competitor, I get the impression that they are going away from the "Honda must do things differently" attitude of the past
It's like what Honda did in the '80s. They were trying to be competitive in flat-track when riders like Roberts, Spencer, Shobert and Lawson were all coming out of the flat-track scene. They were getting nowhere, until they took apart a Harley and figured out that the firing sequence was what made the Harley's so tractable. Once they used that info, they were quickly able to beat Harley Davidson at their own game.
 
Didn't it tale a long time for Ducati to come off their original frame too?

That's pride ...the Duke is on top now solely because of the rulebook imo...
 
Didn't it tale a long time for Ducati to come off their original frame too?

That's pride ...the Duke is on top now solely because of the rulebook imo...
Gigi's employment of the rule book anyway. It is my opinion that so called equalisation rules have a tendency to entrench advantages once they are gained, which has happened in F1 as well.

I have never had much idea how WSBK equalisation works.. .
 
But birdbird says the honda is a great bike.
bUt RiNs WoN oN iT aT cOtA!!!

Spare me.
Are Ducati and Aprilia really any different as far as nationalistic pride is concerned?
Can't think of anyone at Ducati Corse who doesn't have Italian citizenship.
Having good staff who happen to be of the same citizenship is not the same as outright refusing to hire outside staff, OR adopt foreign business concepts imo.

Ducatiditched their trellis frame when Rossi arrived and built a twin spar bike. They hired GiGi and basically gave him an open book to design a bike that could win, as long as it had desmo valves
 
According to this video Zarco declined joining Repsol preferring to ride for LCR

Couldn't be arsed to listen to the entire interview. Sad to say, Stoner sounds like just another out-of-touch old-timer spewing that cracker barrel Calvinist work ethic nonsense out of some kind of misbegotten loyalty to HRC. Ironic given that he first caught the imagination of the racing public, by jumping off a ...... customer Honda and achieving notoriety and great acclaim . . . on a Ducati - and then, jumping back on a Honda. WFT???
 
Yeah, without sounding like I'm just blindly defending Marc (which I'm not), Stoner doesn't have the full facts (only Marc and his team do).

Also, he left Ducati for very similar reasons that Marc is leaving Honda. So pot, kettle and black come to mind.
 
Yeah, without sounding like I'm just blindly defending Marc (which I'm not), Stoner doesn't have the full facts (only Marc and his team do).

Also, he left Ducati for very similar reasons that Marc is leaving Honda. So pot, kettle and black come to mind.
I am a much bigger fanboy of Stoner than I am of MM but he was an old fogey when he was under 30 and still racing.

I always thought he was a tad jealous of MM exceeding him, but great as he was at his peak (as good as anyone ever in his 2 title years imo), I don't think he ever had 6 premier class titles in him physically or mentally. As has been said he jumped off the Ducati himself after it repeatedly tried to kill him while simultaneously not allowing him to contend, although Ducati blamed him rather than the bike and had pretty much written him off while Honda have stuck with MM through thick and thin.

I guess this means Casey is a Honda man for good now,. He never had a problem with Honda even when at LCR, correctly imo blaming substandard Michelin tires for any travails, but rather soured on them/wasn't impressed when the throttle jammed on his Honda superbike when he competed in the Suzuka race post his GP career, resulting in him fracturing a tibia iirc, but must be over that now.
 
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Looks increasingly like Fabio Digianantonio will be basically doing a straight swap with Marquez and ending up at Repsol for next yr.

Oliviera supposedly has a clause in his contract to move but wants a 3 yr deal when Repsol are only offering 1 year.

Surprisingly to me, Lecer Ikuona is not even in the frame which is interesting as Honda apparently rate him highly but LCR weren't interested in him....at all.

MotoGP silly season merry-go-round may end in Buriram as Honda talks "deepen”
 
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