MOTOGP: Honda's Nakamoto Gets Candid

MOTOGP: Honda’s Nakamoto Gets Candid

Honda's MotoGP chief talks openly about the state of Honda's efforts in the world championship.

Media Release | Posted January 11, 2013 (HRC Press Release)

Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner and Shuhei Nakamoto (Photo: Dorna Communications)

In the 2012 MotoGP season, Honda had hoped to repeat its 2011 performance and take all three Titles again. Twelve wins out of 18 races gave Honda the Constructors Title for the 19th time (61st, counting all GP classes). Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner did solid work for the Repsol Honda Team, appearing together on the podium eight times, and Repsol Honda had podium finishes in every race of the season to gain the Team Title again. A number of factors combined to keep the Riders Championship out of Honda hands this time, though.

The first half of the season was especially difficult for Dani as the team struggled to adapt to a last minute minimum weight rule change, followed by new tire specs. But, the story changed for him in the season’s second half after the introduction of the new bike, redesigned to meet the rule and spec changes. Dani could now use the full potential of the RC213V and start clocking up wins, but it was just too late for the title. Dani continues to improve, winning seven races this season, more than any other rider, and finishing his best MotoGP season just 18 points off Jorge Lorenzo. Casey Stoner, last year’s champion, had already decided to retire at the end of this season, and an unfortunate injury prevented him from reaching higher than third place overall.

In this report, HRC Executive Vice President Shuhei Nakamoto looks back over the 2012 season and comments on his hopes and plans for the coming year.

This season is over, you’ve completed the first set of tests for next year, and we’re now in the period where tests are not permitted. I’m sure you’ve been asked these questions many times, but let’s start with your overall impression of 2012.

The big thing about 2012 was the switch from 800cc to 1000cc engines. We started getting ready for that from the beginning of the 2011 season. The first time we ran the 2012 prototype was after Round Two in Spain. In the third lap of that test Casey effortlessly outdid his previous personal best on the 800cc in the 2011 Spanish GP. Since we were still keeping the revs down at that point because we hadn’t fixed some durability issues with the engine, this made us very happy indeed – we knew we had put together a bike we could use. After that, Bridgestone changed their rear tire casing to soft, and we modified the new bike to match that. We still hadn’t completed that process when we had to run the RC213V in the test after Valencia, the final GP of 2011. Despite this, Dani made the top test time with a speed that beat his race time in the GP. Both Dani and Casey agreed that the new bike was even better than the 800cc RC212V. But just as we thought all w as safe, the minimum weight rule was changed by 4kg. That was in addition to the increase from 150kg to 153kg when the engine capacity went up from 800cc to 1000cc. We had built our bike to match the old regulations, and then we were hit with this sudden rule change. According to the rules, they have the right to do this, but I really don’t think it is fair to introduce such big changes so suddenly after we had finished testing.

The sudden rule change meant that for the first test of 2012 at Sepang, you were adding weights to various parts of the bike to bring it up to the new 157kg minimum. Adding 4kg like that disturbed the bike’s balance, and this must have made it hard for Casey and Dani.

Yes, and especially so for Dani because he is smaller and lighter than Casey, so he had a very tough time controlling the balance of the bike by shifting his weight. We kept trying adding weights in different places to see what worked, and we had only found a rough solution during the first part of the season. You might think that 4kg isn’t much, but to add 4kg to a racing bike means we have to make very extensive changes, rethinking the whole machine. And then on top of that, Bridgestone brought out a new front tire with a different construction. We complained that the new tire was unusable since it didn’t have sufficient rigidity, but Dorna’s Loris Capirossi insisted that it was a better choice and so we had to fit it. So now both front and rear tires had changed and this bike we had just spent a whole year perfecting had to be rebuilt. With just three months before the season’s first race we decided to remake the bike, and began work on a new frame and swing arm.

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