The struggles in achieving competitive performance are currently affecting all Honda riders. And not even the specification of the bike tested in Jerez brings more encouraging indications.
LCR Honda rider Takaaki Nakagami mentioned that the problems persist despite the many differences in the RC213V he tested on Monday in Jerez:
– I had the opportunity to do some laps and unfortunately I didn’t feel any positive feelings. The main issue was remaining, even if it looks a different bike – aero, chassis, everything is different. But on track the feeling is the same, it still lacks rear grip, turning. It’s the same feeling, so the lap time doesn’t comes. We tried a couple of things, we tried small things, small adjustments, but the problem is too big.
For the Japanese rider, the major difficulty lies in the fast corners: ‘In the high speed corners the feeling is really bad. This is my strongest point, but somehow this year I was much slower than the last year, which is only in the high speed corners. In the slow corners and braking I’m improving a lot myself on the data, but unfortunately I always lose the time in the high speed corners. I can’t carry speed, turning is really difficult. We tried a different idea and the feeling was that I was fast in the fast corners. But I don’t know for the future; if we keep this idea or we try the 2024 spec and we try to put the new idea with this spec. I don’t know, let’s see what HRC decides for the future’.
Nakagami also said: ‘On Friday I mentioned that I’m really struggling in the high speed corners, but they hadn’t an idea during the weekend. On Monday’s test, we tested a couple of things, we found something, but we don’t know which way HRC wants to go for the future’.