Taka Nakagami is the first to regret it. At its compatriot Honda the crisis seems endless and despite the postures ensuring a change of mentality and approach, no convincing results validate the declarations within the world's leading manufacturer on the track. The latter is Japanese, which was once a quality, transformed since the blows, the audacity and the inventiveness of European brands into a ball and chain. A cultural impasse that goes beyond the LCR pilot… Japanese.
Historically, manufacturers in the land of the rising sun are known for being unresponsive in the face of difficulties, which lengthens deadlines on the ground. Honda faces a technical stalemate and depressing performance that seems to have no end in sight. HRC claims to try to imitate the different methods of Ducati and KTM in terms of speed of response to pilot requests. But so far progress has been minimal
As the team representative explains LCR itself, despite the evolution towards a more European approach, the updated components are still slow to arrive. Even though they have been validated in the testing phase, the extreme attention to detail that touches even the smallest parts continues.
Taka Nakagami: “ engineers want to understand the performance of everything, even a simple screw »
« Engineers want to understand the performance of everything, even a simple screw. Consequently development and production times for new parts are extended " confessed Nakagami.
What is also missing is the quantity of material provided: “ at most one or two developments arrive and it is therefore not possible to take advantage of the innovations during the races. The decision-making process is already long in itself, but once we have defined how we are going to proceed, we still have to wait. » remarked Nakagami
Taka Nakagami nevertheless keep this reason for hope: “All four drivers are making more or less the same comments and we are asking for the same changes. So I think the factory is enlightened as to what is wrong. But the problem is that, for them, safety comes first » concludes with GP One the pilot of 32 years.
