Why 'not very positive' Honda MotoGP test steps aren’t ‘stressing’ Zarco

Johann Zarco says the 2025 Honda he tried at the post-season Barcelona MotoGP test “was not very positive” but is “not getting stressed” about it.

Factory Honda team rider Joan Mir was critical of the Japanese marque’s lack of new items brought to Tuesday’s test at Barcelona.

The 2020 world champion said everything he tried for 2025 were developments he’d tested before this year and was expecting to have more new parts.

Zarco finished 10th overall in the test after 65 laps and was comfortably the fastest HRC rider, though he too was not happy with the evolution of bike he tried.

“We got something new, with a new bike, but was not very positive,” he began.

“So, it’s information to maybe don’t go in this direction for February. My feeling on the bike anyway when I was jumping from my race bike to the new bike, I was working on my riding style, trying to use the bike as well as possible.

“And I was enjoying today because I was doing very short runs but laps of quality, and that was cool. We tried different things that gave some good feelings.

“In general, it was a positive day, but for what Honda wants to push for next year we need to have a meeting to analyse and take a decision to push or not in the direction they went today.

“I think they won’t do it. In general, what we have seen compared to the other bikes, is to improve our engine.

“It’s one of the main points, because we don’t have the fastest bike and it’s important to have power on the bike to fight on the straight and get good positions to overtake on the brakes.

“Then the weak point of our bike, this rear grip control.

“We still didn’t find anything to take a step forward. This grip control can help for acceleration but can also help for the braking area, which is the weak point.”

Among the new items Zarco tried was a different chassis, but he says this took away from the positives of the RC213V and didn’t improve the weak point of traction.

But he is not hitting the panic button just yet as he feels testing something that didn’t work is still a good thing for Honda.

“I think it was taking away the positives,” he added.

“It didn’t improve our weak point. That means something. That’s why I’m not getting stressed about it, because we were not going much slower.

“Because we are still slower than a Ducati, the next steps must make an improvement in lap time.

“That’s why for me it was a positive day because we did many good laps, many laps, and we have a good feeling just working on myself.

“And what we tested also in different areas of the bike gave good feedback and it was much information very important that they will study over the winter.

“It’s not really a new project, but the modification that they did was not very good for the riders.”