“Historically, when Honda has a really strong champion, our philosophy is to always better adapt the bike to that rider, and we’ve done that with Marc for six or seven years,” said HRC MotoGP Technical Director Takeo Yokoyama, towards the end of last season.
“Then suddenly our top driver was gone, so we had to brush up on what we had to do because the driving styles of our other drivers were not the same as Marc’s. That was a challenge for us, but at the same time it was a good moment to sit down with all the engineers and think about which areas we had to work on in order to get the most out of our driver line-up. “
The RC213V has definitely changed with this new focus.
“If Marc hadn’t been injured, the bike probably wouldn’t be the same as it is now, as we’ve followed feedback from our existing riders,” added Yokoyama.
The contributions of Nakagami, Alex Márquez, Cal Crutchlow, and Stefan Bradl made HRC engineers look for new directions in chassis design, but we won’t know exactly which direction they’re headed for 2021 until next month’s pre-season testing begin.
Recent development of the RC213V was made difficult by Michelin’s new 2020 rear slick, which didn’t work well with Honda or Ducati. HRC spent much of last season fitting the bike to the tires and making much more progress than Ducati, which should give Honda’s riders a better start into 2021.
“The change from the previous tire was more massive than predicted,” said Yokoyama. “So we changed many, many things: electronics, exhaust, intake, chassis set-up, chassis geometry and frame stiffness. When you feel like you don’t understand what you need to understand, there are just a lot of different things left to try. We’ve probably tried 100 new things. Perhaps 90 of them were wrong, a failure, but from those failures we learned something and eventually found a way. “
Alex Marquez ‘2020 RC213V. Expect a new chassis on the bike when testing starts next month
Mat Oxley
Another MotoGP technician, who has preferred to remain anonymous, believes the added grip from the 2020 tail may have contributed to Marquez’s fall during the hot Spanish GP, from which he is still recovering.
“By increasing rear grip with the 2020 tire, the bike’s grip balance was shifted back so that the rear overcame the front,” he said. “This is especially true for the heat, because when the tire temperature goes crazy, you lose more grip and friction coefficient from the front tire than from the rear tire, so that the rear tire presses the front axle even more.”
Honda’s MotoGP test rider Bradl, who rode Marc Márquez’s bikes for the remainder of 2020, believes HRC has made good progress at the rear but needs to go further in 2021.
“We’re going faster because we have a better understanding of how to handle the tires, especially the rear,” said Bradl at the Portuguese GP at the end of the season, where he qualified from the second row and finished seventh. “We have to keep working on making the rear tire even better and more useful in one lap. The lap times in qualifying are so tight that you have to get maximum power out of the rear tire for one lap.
“In addition, it seems it takes us a little longer than the others every weekend to understand the condition of the track. That’s one more thing we want to improve for 2021 so that we can be competitive from the start of the weekend. “
Right now, the biggest job for any team in any race is balancing the Michelins’ triangle, bike, and track conditions. This dominates the work of the engineers every weekend, as the Michelins are so sensitive to different asphalts and temperatures.
Therefore, the ideal motorcycle is a machine with which the rider can tackle curves in both styles, depending on the strength of his grip – either braking like crazy to the tip if there is not much grip, or releasing the brakes earlier and sweeping through curves if there is enough is handle to use the edge of the tire.
Last year KTM made a breakthrough in this area, allowing riders to use both techniques on some tracks. Espargaró’s contribution could be crucial here in helping HRC achieve a similar overall performance. In fact, HRC has tried this in the past, trying to improve the cornering speed of the RC213V with Dani Pedrosa. In doing so, however, the motorcycle lost its greatest strength when it aggressively attacked the Apex. MotoGP is always a game that balances the strengths and weaknesses of a motorcycle.
Espargaró certainly still has a lot of work to do, especially with fewer off-season testing than ever before. The traditional post-season tests last fall were canceled due to Covid, leaving drivers with only two three-day preseason tests to prepare for the 2021 World Cup: first in Sepang, Malaysia, February 19-21, then in Losail, Qatar , March 10 to 12. Of course everything that Covid allows.
In addition, Espargaró will be Honda’s lead driver if Marc Márquez can’t start the season …