Nakagami hopes HRC will listen more to LCR riders, excludes Repsol move

The Japanese has spent all six years of his MotoGP career with Honda, at the satellite LCR team.

That compares with just one year of Honda experience for Marquez’s current team-mate Joan Mir and three Honda appearances, in 2019, for Nakagami’s proposed future team-mate Johann Zarco. The #93’s replacement is yet to be announced.

Nakagami joined MotoGP when Honda was on top of the world with titles for Marquez in 2018 and 2019. But the Spaniard’s Jerez 2020 arm injury triggered a downward spiral for HRC that culminated in a winless 2022.

Nakagami’s team-mate Alex Rins returned Honda to the top step with a shock victory in COTA this year, before joining Mir and Marquez on the early season injury list.

With five rounds to go, there is currently no Honda rider in the top 15 of the world championship standings.

“For six years, I know how Honda’s bike works and how it’s been changing every year,” Nakagami said.

“I want to help for the development [next year] and hopefully HRC [will] listen more to the comments of more riders. Not only Factory team, maybe more LCR team.

“If we can help, if we can have more responsibilities, it will be more than nice!”

Despite his experience, and while Zarco’s name is among those being linked with possibly replacing Marquez at Repsol, Nakagami all but ruled out switching to the factory team.

“This is almost 0% because I'm really happy with this team and our main sponsor is Idemitsu. So this is kind of the Idemitsu project and I'm really happy to stay with this team," he said.

Nakagami, the only Honda rider not to miss races due to injuries this year, starts the final five rounds of the season 18th in the world championship, four points behind team-mate Rins.

Rins returned to action at Mandalika last weekend, where he finished as the top Honda in ninth place, after accidents for Marquez and Mir and a soft tyre gamble by Nakagami, who took the flag in eleventh.

Michelin had warned riders against using the soft rear for the full 27-lap grand prix.

“Michelin strongly suggested not to use the soft because of the high chance that it will blister,” acknowledged Nakagami, who was one of five riders to nonetheless try and make the soft last.

“But for us, with Honda’s bike it looks like from medium to soft is quite a big change. The soft compound was working quite well and even for the medium we didn’t know how the long distance would be.

“So in both cases, it looked like a risk, but of course, the high risk was the soft compound. But the soft gives more confidence and I knew that from the beginning of the race, I am able to attack.

“I used that the high potential at the beginning of the race [rising from 20th to 9th]. But I didn't expect that big a drop.”

The Japanese added: “It was really difficult to stop the bike and the rear tyre performance had a huge drop. So at the end was really difficult to manage on the bike.

“But I'm quite happy about, from P20 and today another P11, same as yesterday, and gained a lot of positions. Of course, many riders crashed, was really tricky and really tough conditions.

“We made a quite big step on the bike balance and I'm quite happy about the feeling on the bike, especially at the beginning of the race. In the Sprint and then [GP} on the first and second laps I was able to gain many positions.

“So some areas is positive, but we took a gamble and we lost at the end but it was a little bit positive weekend for us. So head down and let's keep working. Hopefully, we will try to fight in the top ten in Australia, this is the next target for us.”

The Australian MotoGP starts on Friday.