Honda and Yamaha have lost touch with the European manufacturers in MotoGP. Once dominant, they have now become the less competitive members of the grid. Oscar Haro, drawing from his experience with Honda, discussed the reasons behind this decline.
In the former LCR Honda manager’s view, various circumstances contributed, as he explained on the Fast & Curious podcast: ‘What happened here was an accumulation of circumstances. Honda had a trajectory with a bike that was dominant because it had the best riders and the best bike. Then suddenly there was a global pandemic, and the world stopped; the Latin or European character we have here made us «not stop»; evolution continued, work continued somewhat in secret. In Japan, the Japanese culture is radical, so they were totally stopped for a year, but really stopped where no one went to the factories, where there was no communication; where many engineers were caught in Europe and couldn’t even return home – they lived in Andorra for almost a year. So, that was a collapse; there was no evolution’.
At the same time, Haro observed, MotoGP experienced considerable changes, besides Honda losing Marc Márquez to injury for an extended period:
– Even then, I think besides that, MotoGP took a step forward in terms of aerodynamics and the way of riding a bike; the bikes are now much wider, much lower, with much more aerodynamic load. And it was a transition that caught the Japanese brands a bit off guard. Because they were blocked, stopped for a year, and here you are stopped for a week, and you get lost, so imagine a year. And that added to Marc’s accident – Honda’s flagship rider, the one who always won – a very serious, very tough accident, with a very complicated injury taking a long time to recover. So, they were caught off guard.