The Brother of Aleix, Pol is nowhere in the podium in 2022

After leading for much of its race debut in Qatar on the way to third in the hands of Pol Espargaro, the new RCV hasn’t featured on the podium since, leaving Honda last in the MotoGP constructors’ standings.

Once again, Honda’s results have been conditioned by an injury for Marquez, although another dose of the eight-time world champion’s COTA magic would have ensured a podium – at least – without the start line technical issue.

But a week later in Portimao it was back to reality with Marquez, brother Alex (LCR Honda) and Esparagaro fighting tooth and nail over sixth place, 16-seconds behind race winner Quartararo.

“I know everybody expected more but as I already said, we are not ready to fight for the victory,” Marc Marquez said afterwards.

“One lap [in qualifying] is one lap, but the feeling was not good. For the race, we made a small change on the bike that helped me, but it was not enough.

While the new RCV was highly competitive during pre-season testing at Sepang and Mandalika, then the Qatar season opener, Marquez was wary of how the bike would respond to different grip levels:

“It’s true that some Honda riders said ‘yeah, it’s an amazing bike’ but I said ‘be careful because the pre-season has a lot of rubber on the track and then we will have different conditions for the races’.

“We need to check how Jerez is, then we have an important [Monday] test also. We need to do some steps obviously if we are going to fight for the top positions. Because 5th-6th, some podiums, is not the way to fight for the championship.”

Espargaro added: “We are missing what we had in the pre-season. It’s difficult to understand because we don’t stop the bike in the correct place with the rear brake. And then we are leaning too much, opening the throttle and spinning too much on the edge.”