That problem is still the aggressiveness of the Honda RC213V's engine, making the bike hard to handle on corner entry, and leaving it struggling for grip on corner exit. Marc Márquez demonstrated the issue perfectly once again, getting the Honda out of shape as he braked for La Caixa trying to follow Jorge Lorenzo's pace, and ending up running wide and falling in the gravel. The fall was low speed and harmless enough, but damaged Márquez' gear lever, meaning he could not change up, forcing him to abandon. They had improved corner entry a lot, Márquez said, but the problem was still there. During practice and qualifying it was now possible to ride around the problem, losing only a little as he improvised his line to cope when the rear locked up too much. "When you are riding along in practice, I feel that sometimes slide more, less and when you slide more it is difficult to stop the bike," Márquez explained. "But when you are alone you probably can go a little bit wide, come back and only lose one tenth." When that same slide happens when you are racing against another rider, their physical presence on the track means you do not have the same freedom to choose your lines. You are forced somewhere less than ideal, and can easily end up crashing, as Márquez did.
The crash looked scary as observer, and it looked as if Márquez had touched Jorge Lorenzo. Lorenzo certainly seemed to think so, but Márquez denied he had touched him. The three podium men – Lorenzo, Rossi and Pedrosa – were all asked if they felt that Márquez overriding the bike like that put other riders in danger. Lorenzo shrugged suggestively, Rossi joked about Márquez being the kind of friendly guy that always wants to touch you, and Pedrosa remained studiously noncommittal. Later, Bradley Smith was much more vocal. Was he afraid that Márquez would take someone with him when he crashed? No, said Smith. "He always gathers up his problems. He never takes another rider with him," he said. "When he has his issues he makes sure he avoids everybody and then he has his problems off the race track. It’s the same thing that we were talking about let’s say Jerez in his first year. The fact that he nearly hit in the back of everyone and everyone said, it’s dangerous. Yes, it is dangerous but if you’re not going to hit the other riders then really it’s nothing to complain about."
Why take the risk of crashing, we members of the press wondered. Why not ride more conservatively, try to grab some points, and live to fight another day? Firstly, it is not in his nature, Márquez said. "Sure I can finish the race 20 seconds behind them but you know it is not my style," he told reporters. More importantly, though, he had nothing left to lose. "Yesterday I say that now I am at the point where I need to take risks if I want to win this championship but I cannot lose any race." It is a fiendish dilemma indeed. Márquez is so far behind in the championship that he cannot afford to finish behind the Yamaha men. But finishing ahead of them requires taking a massive amount of risk every lap, and you can only get lucky for so long. Finishing third every race will definitely lose him the championship. Trying to win it but crashing will also lose it. "The thing is that these first two laps I was able to follow [Lorenzo] but always at the limit, always riding really smooth. When you are trying to follow them you need to ride 100% on the limit and then when you do a small mistake, like Mugello and here, you lose the race. But for me my mentality it was the only way to win this championship. I tried." And probably failed. Márquez is now on 69 points, exactly half of Rossi's total. He can no longer rely on his own results to win the championship, he will need both Lorenzo and Rossi to start throwing away points.
Márquez' crash is illustrative of Honda's travails. Dani Pedrosa finished a long way behind Lorenzo and Rossi. Part of that may still be Pedrosa's recovery period from arm pump surgery, but this was getting better every race, and even every day, he told the press conference. Still, Pedrosa's problems were responsible only for a small part of the gap. Even fully fit, Pedrosa would still have been a long way from the Yamaha men. Cal Crutchlow, taken out entirely accidentally by Aleix Espargaro on the first lap, a crash in which he broke the rear brake and was forced to pull into the pits, reckoned he could have a good shot at the podium, but he would have been twelve seconds behind the leaders. Honda can't fix the engines, as they are all sealed, and the development moratorium on electronics comes in at the end of this month. That leaves only the chassis for them to play with, but with at least two different specs of chassis – the stiffer variant favored by Marc Márquez, and one with a bit more flex preferred by the other Honda riders – finding a direction is complicated for HRC. They will get there, though. It is just a small matter of research budgets.
