At Honda, we expected Nakagami or Alex Marquez, or even both, to take the lead in this off-season focused on five days in Qatar. Given the short program, we predicted nothing from the new recruit Pol Espargaró whose mission was only to make his mark alongside the stubborn and fast test pilot Stefan Bradl. But nothing went as planned and the two regular drivers placed with LCR were at a loss. Nakagami takes stock and expresses his doubts, including those on the advisability of being vaccinated…
Takaaki Nakagami comes out of this offseason disappointed not to have collected all the data on a Honda latest generation which requires some adaptations. An exercise which was disrupted by a sandstorm on Friday, which deprived him of a precious day of work. “ Many things are still new to me » admits the 29-year-old pilot. On the combined timesheet, the Honda-LCR rider is 12th, one second behind the Ducati of Jack Miller, author of the best time on Wednesday. “ We are not very happy with the performance these days because we are not very competitive yet, we are not finding good rhythm and we have some problems with the rear » admits the Japanese.
« On Friday we wanted to make a plan as to whether we would go to the race in Qatar with the new or the standard chassis. We wanted to compare the two variants directly with each other, but unfortunately this was not possible »Regrets Nakagami. But he added: “ I think we will use the new chassis because I think he has a little more potential, especially in terms of speed and confidence on the bike ».
« Unlike last year, I feel a little less grip because the tire choice is slightly different from last season. The tires have become a notch harder, but you can still see that some drivers are already faster than last year. We haven't reached the level of Jack, Fabio and Maverick yet, we're missing a whole turn on these guys », underlined the teammate ofAlex Marquez who regretted numerous falls, to the point of injuring his foot.
« Over a long distance, however, things seem different, with some of them the times drop massively after ten or 15 laps. The test is difficult to understand, so you will have to wait until the race weekend » says Nakagami.
Nakagami: “in some areas, Pol Espargaró is clearly faster than me”
Certainly, but there is also the case Pol Espargaro, newcomer to Honda, and who has completed the test of Qatar in 10th place, ahead of his much more experienced colleagues on the RC213V. “ We took a close look at Pol's data and you can see that it's not completely installed on the Honda. But it was still very interesting for us. In some areas he is significantly faster than me, which is good to see because it means we still have room for improvement. », Analyzes the Japanese. “ It is now my duty to analyze the data and think about it before the race weekend. I still have to adapt to the 2021 bike ».
« I tried to keep my riding style from last season on the new bike, because there are some things about the machine that are different and if I had changed my style it would have been complicated. After the testing days, however, I'm sure I need to change something, because we tried a wide variety of things and it was not so easy to understand everything. There are some issues we haven't been able to resolve, so it's not the bike, it's the riding style. I'll have to think about it for the next ten days » humbly admits Nakagami.
On Friday, drivers and teams had the opportunity to make vaccinate against the Covid-19. The cooperation of the government of Qatar with Dorna allowed this opportunity. However, Takaaki Nakagami decided not to take advantage of it, at least for the moment. “ I received information on possible vaccination on Thursday on Friday ", said the pilot MotoGP. " But this time I decided not to because I don't have much confidence yet and I need more information about the vaccine. Some team members chose to do this, others did not. But most people accepted vaccination. For me it was very short because I heard about it in the evening and the next morning I would have had to take the bus to go to the hospital in Doha ».
For the moment, all drivers are not equal in the face of Covid-19, a difference which can be explained by each person's choices. It will be recalled that the proposed vaccine requires a second injection after a certain period of time, a period during which the paddock will be in Losail. But you still have to do the first… Carmelo Ezpeleta made it clear that it was important to get vaccinated. Not only for the two meetings at Qatar, but also for the rest of the season…
MotoGP Tests Qatar 2: combined ranking
Credit rankings: MotoGP.com
