During the 8th round of the Qatar Grand Prix, Iker Lecuona was forced to park his Swiss Innovative Investors team KTM at the side of the track, following a mechanical problem.
A generic formula which can hide a lot of things and for which we generally do not know the exact explanation.
The Japanese block has reached an extraordinary level of reliability, so we could have classified this incident as statistics and not taken specific measures.
Except that here, in 8 years of operation, this was certainly a first. After opening the new crankcases of the young Spanish driver's engine, it was found that the cause of his retirement was due to one of the connecting rod bearings being poorly lubricated, something that never happens with the old Honda block.
After analysis, it was detected that a tube forming part of the lubrication system was broken and was causing a general drop in pressure in the circuit (Edited after verification of information: part #11 on the exploded view below).
ExternPro, the Spanish company which takes care of the maintenance of Honda engines, therefore immediately decided as a precaution to intervene on all the engines which have already taken part in the Qatar Grand Prix. But as the motorcycles had immediately been crated there to be transported by plane to Argentina, it was not able to do so before their delivery to the competitors yesterday.
Yesterday afternoon, we were able to watch the mechanics dismantle the motors and bring them to ExternPro to have the tubes concerned replaced.
As we can see, it is not because this is the last year of the Honda engine in Moto2 that we are safe from any (bad) surprises. Fortunately, Externpro keeps an eye on things, and, in the end, only the unfortunate Iker Lecuona will have suffered from this unexpected failure.
