With only two races left now before MotoGP heads for its five-week summer break, there are still an awful lot of key decisions to be made for 2023 and beyond.
News of Marc Marquez’s departure for an indefinite period as he undergoes fresh surgery could not, therefore, have come at a worst time for either the eight-time world champion or his Honda team as it attempts to come up with a future-proof strategy.
Marquez will undergo fresh surgery this week on his right upper arm, the fourth operation since he broke it almost 23 months ago in a crash at Jerez.
It’s a make-or-break operation that will either finally fix all his issues and allow him to get back to winning ways, or that won’t achieve anything and will keep him in the constant pain he’s already in, and it’s not hyperbole to say that his whole racing future is hanging in the balance.
“If the operation is a good success, then… we will see how I can ride a bike. But it’s true that riding like this, I cannot continue,” Marquez admitted on Sunday, just after hanging up his leathers for the foreseeable future.
His rehabilitation time from the operation, set to happen at Minnesota’s world-leading Mayo Clinic, remains unknown. The 29-year-old revealed that doctors told him that if he was planning to rush back onto a MotoGP bike, then there was no point in even coming for the treatment.
It’s likely that his recuperation will be measured in months not weeks, with some rumours suggesting that there is even a chance that we won’t see Marquez back in action again in 2022.
That would mean the recovery time from all his injuries will essentially amount to three whole seasons, despite a brief return in mid-2021 when he picked up a couple of race wins before being sidelined again with concussion and double vision, which was repeated in early 2022.
He is of course the beneficiary of a long-term contract with Honda that keeps him on the bike until at least the end of 2024: another two full seasons, and to the end not of the current contract period for most of the grid but the end of the one currently being negotiated by his rivals.
That will bring him some comfort, knowing that he’s got the time he needs to fully recover while still being secure in his job – but it opens up a lot of uncertainty for his employer.
When Marquez and Honda signed that record-breaking deal (both in terms of length and remuneration), it was with the promise of having a fully fit and utterly dominant champion to keep racking up wins and titles. It came right at the start of 2020, only months after Marquez had completed the 2019 MotoGP season with the biggest winning margin in history and with a podium in every single race he finished.
It’s fair the deal (rumoured to be worth around €25million a year for four years, double any previous MotoGP salary) was an example of Honda putting all its eggs in one basket, securing its future by locking in grand prix motorcycle racing’s most dominant champion since previous Repsol racer Mick Doohan.
But, arguably, that strategy has now backfired. Marquez is out of action, and current team-mate Pol Espargaro – brought in as a safe pair of hands after two seasons of relative chaos following the departure of Dani Pedrosa – isn’t performing.
Espargaro has been unable to extract the maximum from the bike and has been inconsistent even if he’s occasionally fast, which means it’s hard to imagine that he will have a future with Honda beyond this year.
So Honda now finds itself in a contract dilemma. If you are team boss Alberto Puig, do you double down on your previous bet with Marquez, and hope that this operation is the final one that he needs to be able to bounce back as strong as ever? It’s a gamble but, with €50m already on the table, there’s an argument suggesting that it might as well go all in.
Alternatively, there are a number of key figures now on the 2023 market who could well be all that Honda needs to return to winning ways – if it wants to pay big money for them.
Suzuki refugee Joan Mir, is, of course, top of that list, but with the 2020 world champion believed to be asking for a significant salary from Honda (rumoured to be around €8m), negotiations have reportedly stalled somewhat.
That may be in part because of those financial demands – but it might also be because Mir’s management believes it has a winning hand if Honda decides that it can’t continue to rely on the possibility of Marquez becoming fast again.
There are of course other names in the mix too, with 2021 world champion Fabio Quartararo still unsigned before this year at Yamaha.
Quartararo, who is leading the championship again this year but unhappy with his machine, is certain to be a Honda target, but will also likely be asking for a large sum given his current employer should be desperate to keep him.
Should Honda decide both of those names are out of its price range – or that they’re not worth having given it’s certain Marquez will come back fully fit – then keeping Espargaro might be the most sensible option, especially after spending time and energy in the past year reconfiguring the RC213V to better suit his tastes.
And that could mean that it still has some power in this game – at least to keep its potential candidates waiting. There’s now an eight-week window covering only three rounds of the championship as the loss of the Finnish GP extends the summer break, and it could well be that we’re about to go into something of a silly season pause as a result.
