Honda and Yamaha fell down the MotoGP standings almost in parallel and in outwardly similar positions now as they try to claw their way back to their former glory.
Both chose to launch their 2025 MotoGP efforts last week in South East Asia and did so only 24 hours apart, making it inevitable that even more comparisons would be made between them.
Even more so because the tone of their approaches to pre-season seems so telling.
Yamaha pulled the covers off not only its works team’s bikes but also that of new satellite team Pramac (fresh from last year’s title success with Jorge Martin), doing so in one of Kuala Lumpur’s hottest nightlife locations - the rooftop bar of the W Hotel, with the famous Petronas Towers looming overhead.
And, with a new satellite team, a new team boss and the promise of a whole new bike with a V4 engine at some point this season, it very much felt like a departure from previous seasons, which have largely just involved unveiling the livery in pitlane prior to the Sepang test.
This year, there was something of a buzz about the whole presentation, one that has been missing from the team in recent seasons amid rather disappointing on track results.
Yamaha’s coming into 2025 with a new energy, and it’s fair to say that that was reflected in the way it showed off its new colours.
Honda, on the other hand, very much felt like just more of the same. Not in a swanky city centre hotel but instead in its rider training centre at Honda’s massive factory in an industrial area outside Jakarta (neighbours include Suzuki, Maxxis tyres and zipper manufacturer YKK), its event felt decidedly more low key than Yamaha’s.
That’s reflected in what Honda had to announce, too.
Yamaha has made a cultural shift, it seems, with the addition of key European senior staff now starting to pay off. But while Honda might have done the same, it hasn’t kicked in in quite the same way, and the launch reflects what’s still a very Japanese corporate affair.
The combination of both European and Japanese skills has, as new Yamaha boss Paolo Pavesio told The Race, been crucial in returning the team towards the path back to success. But Honda is a year behind, if not more, in making those changes.
The biggest talking point from its launch was the addition of former Aprilia technical boss Romano Albesiano to the team - but, with the event clashing with the shakedown test at Sepang, he remained in Malaysia rather than travelling the two hours to Indonesia.
In his absence, it was left up to Joan Mir and Luca Marini to discuss his impact - and in all honesty both were far from convincing in suggesting that he’s had much of an impact on how the team functions so far.
It would, you’d have thought, made sense to have Albesiano and new test rider signing Aleix Espargaro there for it in the same way that Yamaha were keen to display its own European technical boss Max Bartolini and testers Augusto Fernandez and Andrea Dovizioso as a key part of their structure - but it wasn’t to be.
Of course, it’s somewhat hasty to read too much into the venue and style of a pre-season launch as indicative of an upcoming MotoGP season.
But these events nonetheless help set the tone for the year ahead, something that’s been more relevant than ever in 2025 with Aprilia’s more mature launch as it unveiled the number one plate on Jorge Martin’s bike and KTM’s head-on approach to a winter of speculation about its financial issues.
And in that context, it’s hard to take any other message than that one of MotoGP’s Japanese factories is fighting hard and making the necessary changes to get back to winning ways - and the other is still stuck in the past.
