2024 concessions didn’t enhance Honda’s MotoGP outcomes, Mir admits

Manufacturing facility HRC rider Joan Mir feels concessions introduced no notable enchancment in outcomes for Honda in MotoGP this yr.

MotoGP revamped its concession system in 2024 to assist Honda and Yamaha shut the hole to European producers, with the 2 fallen Japanese giants having slipped away significantly from competitors the earlier yr.

Amongst different issues, Honda was given intensive freedom to introduce new developments on monitor, together with completely different engine specs, whereas Mir and team-mate Luca Marini have been additionally allowed to participate in non-public checks.

Nevertheless, Honda nonetheless completed on the backside of the producers’ standings and ended the yr with simply 75 factors on board, fewer than half of the 185 factors it tallied up in 2023 when Marc Marquez was a part of its manufacturing unit group.

It is why Mir feels that concessions, regardless of their supposed objective, didn’t assist Honda to get out of its present hunch in MotoGP.

Requested the place Honda would have been within the pecking order this yr if it hadn’t had the luxurious of concessions, he stated: “This yr most likely in the identical place we’re. 

“I hope this helps us for the following one. However within the brief time period we did not get any benefit. We see it within the outcomes [that there was no improvement]. 

Joan Mir, Repsol Honda Workforce

Photograph by: Honda

“We have now to discover a approach to get good items [on the bike] that assist us to be quicker. In the meanwhile, we could not get it.”

Mir additionally felt his schedule in 2024 was far more hectic than traditional attributable to extra testing duties, making him surprise if there may be any profit to permitting race riders to run the bike exterior of grand prix weekends.

“The factor that the manufacturing unit riders are capable of check extra, I do not suppose that is a bonus as a result of if the bike is best I’d be quicker,” he stated. 

“That is why we have now a check group. If we go to check one thing and we keep all day between one week and one other one, we do not relaxation psychologically. 

“We go one check, race, one check, race [and so on]. Generally it is worse, [not] higher. 

“That is why we have now a check group that now could be being strengthened and we have now to make them work to have correct stuff. What they suppose is working, we attempt [that] on the GPs and we see that it is higher.”

Honda has bolstered its check group for 2025, with three-time grand prix winner Aleix Espargaro becoming a member of Stefan Bradl in Europe and LCR rider Takaaki Nakagami retiring from lively duties to tackle a Japan-focused check position.

Mir believes these modifications, mixed with concessions, might ship some much-needed positive factors for Honda subsequent yr.

“The check group was not [big] sufficient [this year],” he stated. “We had only one check rider, and actually we might enhance loads of the infrastructure of the check group, so they’re doing it and I feel this for the following yr will likely be superb.”