Any bike is a good bike in MotoGP — so long as it’s not manufactured by Honda.
That seems to be the defining ethos of the 2024 MotoGP rider market.
It’s delivered the highly unusual situation of having some riders on the brink of potentially losing their MotoGP rides despite Honda facing at least one and as many as three vacancies.
Such is the sorry state of the former premier-class juggernaut in 2023.
The story of Honda’s season so far has largely revolved around star Marc Márquez and his mental tribulations adjusting to the reality that his RC213V isn’t simply slow but also has a desire to cause him serious injury.
The Spaniard is yet to complete a grand prix distance this year and withdrew from the last two races before the mid-season break.
But signs of Honda’s deep troubles are arguably more apparent among his stablemates.
While debate has raged about whether Márquez will leave the team with which he’s achieved all his MotoGP success, Álex Rins has already pulled the ripcord.
The six-time winner will join Yamaha next season, replacing the out-of-form Franco Morbidelli.
Rins had signed a two-year deal to ride for LCR but retained the option to break ties if a factory team offered him a deal.
That he’s jumped at the chance to ride for Yamaha, a bike so uncompetitive that even tenacious champion Fabio Quartararo has become deeply disillusioned on it, speaks volumes about the state of the Honda operation.
It may not be an isolated incident either.
Factory Honda rider Joan Mir has reportedly been sounding out escape options after his injury-riddled half-season so far, with a satellite Ducati ride a potential option.
And if that weren’t bad enough, KTM has been sounding out the entire LCR team to extract it from Honda’s orbit.
The dominoes are lined up. It’s just a matter of whether anyone is willing to start the chain reaction.
WHY RINS TO YAMAHA MAKES SENSE
It’s ironic that Honda’s most successful rider of the season has been the first to jump, after bringing home an unlikely victory in the United States just three rounds into the year.
But Rins has also been among the worst affected by Honda’s problems. While a variety of individual injuries have hamstrung Mir and Márquez, a horror leg breakage in Italy in June has kept him off the bike ever since, including for this weekend’s British Grand Prix.
Even at the Circuit of the Americas Rins was already sounding unhappy about his position at Honda, where he lamented that the factory team didn’t use him enough to try to solve its obvious bike problems despite his pedigree.
Rins certainly believes he’s deserving of factory support and attention, and few would disagree.
With Yamaha having fundamentally lost faith in Morbidelli after a disastrous 2022 campaign, Rins was an obvious choice once it became clear he was open to leaving LCR.
It’s not simply that he’s available ether. For a Yamaha team seemingly running out of ideas to speed up its bike, Rins is an ideal long-term candidate for having been there and done that with Suzuki.
The 27-year-old was integral to Suzuki become a frontrunning force shortly before withdrawing from the sport with a bike that was most similar to Yamaha compared to any other on the grid.
Both leant heavily on smooth riding styles to make up time in the corners, in part thanks to both having been pegged around the in-line four-cylinder motor that appears increasingly out of vogue in MotoGP.
His partnership with Quartararo also makes Yamaha’s one of the grid’s fastest line-ups, at least on paper.
For a team lacking a bit of inspiration, Rins is an inspired choice.
WHAT NOW FOR MORBIDELLI?
The knock-on effects of Rins’s move are complicated an interconnected.
The most obvious next question is about what happens to Morbidelli.
The Valentino Rossi protégé has the high-profile backing of his mentor, but Rossi’s VR46 team is fully subscribed in 2024 with Marco Bezzecchi and Luca Marini.
It’s thought Bezzecchi’s demands for a factory bike after his title-contending start to the season will be met by an upgrade to VR46’s supply deal rather than a move to Pramac, potentially at the expense of Johann Zarco.
That still leaves a seat at Gresini available, where Fabio di Giannantonio is widely believed to be on the way out of the sport.
His seat has been earmarked for Moto2 title leader Tony Arbolino, though the 22-year-old Italian’s manager, Carlo Pernat, told GPOne last month that his client’s future will be dependent on whatever Morbidelli does first, suggesting the Gresini seat could become Morbidelli’s refuge.
Pernat also said that LCR boss Lucio Cecchinello has sounded out Morbidelli in what would amount to a straight swap into Rins’s former seat, though he would presumably have to have made a significant offer to overcome the appeal of a Ducati bike.
WHAT ABOUT JOAN MIR?
Rumours late last month placed Mir in talks with Gresini about taking Di Giannantonio’s seat next season, which is engineered by his former Suzuki crew chief, Frankie Carchedi.
While moving to Ducati’s fourth-string satellite team would look like an enormous step down, you need only look at Enea Bastianini’s meteoric rise to the factory bike to understand the opportunity it presented.
Gresini will also field this year’s all-conquering Desmosedici next season — a potent counterargument.
Speedweek has reported that Gresini has denied considering Mir an option, but rumours continue to swirl that the 2020 world champion is investigating alternatives given his shocking injury run this year — he’s finished just one grand prix, retired from three more and not entered the rest.
Alternatives to Gresini, however, are difficult to envisage short of a major grid shake-up.
THE RACE FOR MORE BIKES
Perhaps fortunately for Mir, a major shake-up is exactly what KTM is targeting.
KTM has the unique problem of having signed too many rider for its four bikes — a quandary that must appear completely alien to Honda as riders try to abandon the Japanese marque.
Factory riders Jack Miller and Brad Binder are locked in for next season and are performing strongly.
Pol Espargaró is under contract at satellite team Gas Gas for next year — the Spaniard will return to the grid this weekend in Silverstone after a long injury recovery — and the team recently renewed Augusto Fernández as his teammate for 2024.
But KTM has also committed to promoting the highly rated Pedro Acosta to MotoGP next year.
The team is waiting to see if Espargaró can return to full fitness, having missed the entire year to date after breaking his back in a sickening practice crash at the first round. If the younger Espargaró brother isn’t up to it, the Acosta problem may solve itself.
But if the internally popular Espargaró can prove he’s still quick, KTM CEO Stefan Pierer has committed to finding a fifth seat by any means.
“If I need an extra place, everything will be arranged,” he told Speedweek.
MotoGP has denied KTM an extra satellite team — Dorna partially subsidises every satellite squad and would prefer to attract new manufacturers to the grid instead.
Short of a loan agreement, which could risk losing Acosta to a rival in the long term, there are only two alternatives: find an independent team to either align with or buy out.
LCR boss Cecchinello has already revealed that KTM has phoned him asking about the status of his Honda supply contract. It runs until 2024, and he implied that he’s committed to sticking with the Japanese marque.
But Pierer is undeterred.
“The current economic situation will not make things any easier for the private MotoGP teams,” he said
“I hear the second Aprilia team is already having financial difficulties; it must be supported by Aprilia.
“I’m assuming that one or the other MotoGP spots will become available and that we will compete with all five riders.
“One or the other, a place will surely fall down. I bet you!”
There’s all manner of speculation about who might then ride the second additional KTM satellite bike. Rumours continue to connect Márquez to the brand thanks in part to his Red Bull sponsorship — though a non-factory ride would surely be a difficult pill to swallow for the champion, particularly given KTM is yet to become a regular race winner.
Such a theoretical seat could instead set off something of a bidding war between riders desperate to hold their places on the grid but equally determined to avoid Honda at all costs.
