After the sharp competitive decline of recent years, this season Honda and Yamaha begin the MotoGP season at the highest level of development concessions. The new tier system was introduced for 2024 and one of its goals is to try to help level the playing field by allowing the two Japanese constructors to overcome the disadvantage they faced in the post-pandemic period.
Randy de Puniet told paddock-gp.com that the question will be to what extent Honda and Yamaha will be able to take advantage of the concession: ‘I anticipate a good year. We look forward to seeing what will happen with Yamaha and Honda’s concessions: will they benefit from it? In any case, they are doing everything possible to return to the level. At one point, Aprilia, KTM, and even Ducati had the right to it for a long time, so a solution had to be found for these bikes to return to the fight, at least for the podiums. Will they be able to do it?’
The Frenchman acknowledged the efforts of both constructors, believing that in theory they can return to the fight: ‘In any case, they are doing everything possible and if they cannot, it means that in terms of development and ideas they are behind compared to European constructors, since Aprilia managed to do something, KTM also did. Therefore, there is no reason why Japanese manufacturers cannot succeed.’
