How Honda found its true MotoGP leader in 2024

As he soaked in the spoils of a long-awaited first grand prix win at the Australian Grand Prix in 2023, it was hard not to feel a sense that this could well be the only one Johann Zarco will ever get in MotoGP.

By then he’d already signed a two-year factory deal to join Honda with the LCR squad to replace Yamaha-bound Alex Rins. Honda results were poor throughout 2023, to the point where it managed to lose Marc Marquez to the Gresini Ducati satellite squad for 2024 - an unthinkable moment for MotoGP just five years prior at the height of the Spaniard’s dominance.

Zarco’s decision to turn his back on a works-supported Ducati for the grid’s least competitive bike raised eyebrows, but his own thinking was sound. Ducati was looking down the road at gently moving him aside, likely into its World Superbike programme, while the now-34-year-old (rightly) felt like he still had more to give in MotoGP. After all, he finished top five in the standings in 2021 and 2023.

Honda offered him the job security he needed, and also a chance at redemption. The last time Zarco took on a factory project in need of a boost, it damn near killed his career. His ill-fated switch to KTM for the 2019 season saw him quit the two-year deal mid-season, with the Austrian manufacturer ultimately booting him out after the San Marino GP.

He turned up for three races at LCR Honda as a replacement rider at the end of the year, scoring a best of 13th in Australia. Initially reticent to accept a deal to join the Avintia squad at the behest of Ducati - citing the outfit as “not professional” - Zarco did end up at the team for 2020 and successfully rebooted his career.

Honda wasn’t exactly falling over offers from top names, but in Zarco it secured a good development rider and a human being shaped by difficult experiences.

“Oh yeah!,” he enthused ahead of the final grand prix of 2024 in Barcelona when asked if he has enjoyed his first year with Honda. “I try to enjoy every moment during the season even if it was tough sometimes when you cannot even follow the other riders, because there is too much difference. But the last six races, I was following them, I was fighting with them, which was again back in business and that was a nice feeling.

“Maybe it has been a little bit longer than what we expected, but better late than never. This gave us great motivation to Honda, to Lucio [Cecchinello], to me, to the team in the right moment. I can say that it was tough but I can say also that I knew I won’t be in the same position as what I did last year. So, knowing that it can be tough then I accepted it much better. I tried to get pleasure for all the season.

“It was not easy also to analyse if I’m doing well, if it was only the bike not performing or maybe sometimes if I was doing wrong. That’s the most difficult thing, when the result is not speaking for you you have to analyse quite well.  But it was the right challenge for my moment in MotoGP. And I hope, now, with what I did this year that I do a step back to jump forward for maybe the next two years.”

In the post-season test in Valencia in 2023, Honda appeared to hit the ground running with its rebuilding efforts, only to go in the wrong direction in terms of bike philosophy in the winter of 2024. After six rounds, Honda had just 19 points in the constructors’ standings and a best standalone result of 12th in three grands prix.

Honda used its concession status to test throughout the year and throw new items at the RC213V. But it wouldn’t be until the Misano test in September that there was a genuine breakthrough, with a new aero fairing making the bike a bit more agile.

At the Emilia Romagna GP, Joan Mir gave Honda its best result of the season to that point in 11th. Next time out in Indonesia, Zarco qualified his LCR-run Honda seventh on the grid, converting this to the marque’s first sprint points of the year in eighth and scoring its first top 10 on a Sunday in ninth in the grand prix.

Zarco would deliver Honda its best result of the year in a wet Thailand GP with a ride to eighth, while he put points on the board in grands prix from Aragon through to the Solidarity GP finale.

The Frenchman’s stats against his Honda stablemates are seriously impressive. He was the top Honda rider in qualifying 16 times out of 20 and made five Q2 appearances. Mir, Luca Marini and Takaaki Nakagami didn’t see Q2 once in 2024.

In sprints, Zarco led the Honda charge eight times, while in grands prix he came out on top in 12 of them. He contributed 46 of Honda’s 75 points in the constructors’ table and was 24 points clear of the next-best HRC representative in the riders’ standings.

Zarco’s rapid time attack form was something that regularly caught attention in 2024, but was something other HRC riders couldn’t replicate. Mir - who at one stage in 2024 was being rumoured as walking away from MotoGP altogether amid Honda’s woes - has a theory.

“For some reason he’s able to make one lap,” Mir said when asked by Crash.net why Zarco was so quick in qualifying trim compared to the other Hondas. “For me, it’s the area where I struggle the most because of the problems we have with vibration. And for him it’s the area where he struggles less. So, we are trying to understand. He’s able to do something we cannot at the moment, and every time I try a bit more I finish on the ground.

“We have to understand, but we are in a bit of an evolution with the bike. So, with this bike we have some unexpected problems that makes you ride in a strange way. Probably that [strange] way is matching him very good with the new tyre, but not for me at all.”

When Crash asked Zarco the same question, he replied: “No.”

“I’ve tried to change things also on my riding style to use some strong points of the bike,” he added. “Acceleration was always one of my best points, but then with the Ducati we have seen that I was losing time on the entry and I was losing more time on the entry than what I was gaining on the exit. So, I tried to develop myself also to be better in the entry. But when I see I can improve the entry, I don’t lose the exit, so that will be an advantage for the future - and even now that is starting to pay off.”

Zarco’s pragmatic outlook wasn’t always apparent during his first season with Honda. LCR team boss Lucio Cecchinello admitted that the Frenchman did, at times, early on lose his patience. And, to be fair to him, most would if after 11 rounds of a season you’d scored just 14 points - especially having tallied up 141 with regular podium visits in the same span a year earlier.

But, once again, Zarco was able to find acceptance in his situation.

“I’ve learned that, even in the tough times, you can still work on yourself and try to find a way to work on yourself,” he said. “Then when you find this way, you use the bike better also. And you don’t lose yourself in comments and technical stuff: the technical stuff is for the technicians, not the rider. If the best Japanese engineers are not finding an answer straight away, as a rider we will not find it too, because we are not better than an engineer. Clearly we are less intelligent than an engineer.

“I still have things to grow up. I didn’t use perfectly the Ducati last year, because [Jorge] Martin and Pecco [Bagnaia] were better. [Marco] Bezzecchi did a better year than me in ’23. I needed to change things and I tried to change those things already this year. And thanks to Honda and the lack of results, I could change my mind and change things because I had less pressure.”

After the post-season test in Barcelona, Zarco admitted the 2025 bike he tried was “not very positive”. But he saw no point in getting “stressed” about it because bad results are still positive in terms of finding the correct development path.  

It was in stark contrast to Mir’s anger after he felt he tried nothing he hadn’t already tested, which also contradicted how team-mate Marini analysed the test.

Zarco’s comments walked between what both of his Honda counterparts said and offered a easier-to-understand picture as to where the RC213V is going into the off-season. It’s that grounded approach that Honda has really been able to benefit from in 2024 as it forged closer working ties with the LCR squad.

Clearly, Honda is nowhere near its goals of being able to fight at the front of the MotoGP grid again. But it has at least seemingly found the right rider to lead it back there. Zarco’s mentality about this project has allowed him to see the positives, no matter how small, while his riding ability saw him extract the absolute best out of a bad package in 2024.