Nakagami: Zarco, Marini “really important” - ‘The Ducati does this, but Honda does this…’

The 2024 Honda RC213V may look radically different but, according to Takaaki Nakagami, the key weaknesses remain the same.

The good news is that the Japanese believes clear progress has been made in several other areas, namely qualifying laps and engine performance.

Following the departure of Marc Marquez, Nakagami, at LCR since 2018, is the most experienced RCV rider in Honda’s current line-up.

The 32-year-old was 13th fastest at the Sepang test, one-second behind Ducati’s double world champion Francesco Bagnaia and 0.4s from the top Honda of Joan Mir (Repsol).

“We made quite a big step today,” Nakagami said of his time attack. “Our target is to improve the qualifying lap and definitely yes, it was the first time I was able to go into the ‘57s so I’m quite happy. But the top time is one second faster!

“Definitely, the strong point [of the new bike] is the engine performance. Top speed and the torque delivery is much smoother. It's quite easy to understand what's happening on the bike and this is much better than last year's bike.

“The whole package I think is improving. Aero also. But still, honestly speaking, the rear grip is pretty much similar. I mean at the end all four riders complain a lot about the rear grip. The spinning.

“This is the worst point because we cannot kill the spin and we cannot drop the spin, so this keeps spinning, spinning, spinning. That's why after 10 laps our tyre has a big drop. Especially turn 3 and the last two corners we have a crazy amount of spin.

“So we need to not lose the engine performance, maybe even go higher, but try to create more rear grip.

“Because if we have a lot of grip, the bike [works] pretty well. But when the tyres drop, it's so difficult to control. Also Luca [Marini] said that it's quite difficult to manage when the tyre drops. So this is the key point for the race.

“So hopefully next test in Qatar I think we can get some small items to improve the bike balance and hopefully we can find a good pace.

“Maybe the qualifying lap now is OK. Still we can improve. But maybe for the next test our focus point is more on the long run.”

Nakagami has a new team-mate this season in Johann Zarco who, like Marini (Repsol), is arriving at Honda after several seasons at Ducati.

“It's really important, the comments from Zarco and Marini, because they came from the best bike, Ducati,” Nakagami said. “So yes, 'what is the big difference between Ducati and Honda?' We had a big meeting and they were pointing out, ‘Ducati does this, but the Honda does this’.

“So the Honda engineers are trying to understand to get the information from these two riders to try different concepts or different ideas for the future. But it's really important - also for myself it's really interesting, what is the difference between these bikes.

“But in some areas they are happy - about the engine performance for example. But yes about the rear grip and also stability, we are still missing.

“As I said, the one lap maybe we can play a little bit, but for a long run we are quite far. So we need to focus more on that at the Qatar test. “

Zarco, a race winner in his final Pramac season and 16th fastest at the Sepang test, agreed:

“Now the bike can be quite good for a time attack. Maybe the weak point is when we have to do many laps in a row, the rear tyre is really struggling a lot. And this can create problems in the race.

“But the capacity of the bike to do a quick lap time with a new tyre is something that Honda didn’t have before. So that’s a big point they fixed, and now we will see how to fix the next point.

“Clearly, another track in Qatar, another layout, it will be interesting to see how the bike behaves.”

The Qatar test takes place next Monday and Tuesday.