Honda's Awful MotoGP Bike Forces Marc Marquez To Leave Team Early

Photo: Toshifumi Kitamura / AFP (Getty Images)

Honda Racing Corporation has announced that Marc Marquez will be leaving its factory MotoGP team at the end of this season. The six-time world champion is only in the third year of his four-year contract at Repsol Honda, but the team’s now-perennial lack of competitiveness forced the early split. It hasn’t been confirmed where Marquez will ride next year, but it will likely be on a title-contending Ducati at a satellite team.

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Since his most recent title victory in 2019, Marc Marquez has only won three races. The decline in trophies isn’t due to a lack of ability on the Spaniard’s end. He’s always the leading Honda rider in any season where he completes a majority of the rounds. Marquez missed four races due to injury this year, and he’s still the manufacturer’s highest-placed rider despite being 15th in the championship.

Marquez’s body paid the price for Honda’s inability to develop its Grand Prix bike. During his initial run of six MotoGP championships in his first seven seasons, Marquez made a habit of crashing in practice to find the limit of how hard he could push his motorcycle. The problems came as Honda slipped down the order and Marquez crashed during races riding aggressively to catch his rivals. He broke his right arm in the 2020 season opener and missed nearly the entire season. The injury didn’t heal correctly, and he missed a chunk of the 2022 season recovering from a fourth surgery to repair his arm.

Marquez rightfully became publicly disillusioned by Honda’s lack of progress early this year. The rumor mill began to churn, and ultimately led to today’s announcement:

Honda Racing Corporation and Marc Marquez have mutually elected to terminate their four-year contract prematurely at the end of the 2023 MotoGP World Championship season.

With a year still remaining on the four-year contract between HRC and Marc Marquez, both parties have mutually agreed to end their collaboration upon completion of the 2023 MotoGP World Championship season. Both parties agreed it was in their best interests to each pursue other avenues in the future to best achieve their respective goals and targets.

The current pecking order in MotoGP is simply Ducati or nothing. There’s also a fleet of full-time Ducati entries in the 22-rider championship, two at the factory teams and six across three satellite teams. Gresini satellite rider Jorge Martin is currently second in the title race, only three points behind factory rider Francesco Bagnaia with another satellite rider in third.

Marquez might not be riding for a factory team next season, but the move will immediately make him the favorite to win the championship. Motorcycle racing as a whole is better off with Marc Marquez on a bike capable of winning races. He’s still the consensus best rider in the world despite the last few years of struggles and needs to be in a position to use his potential to the fullest without prematurely ending his career in a crash to do so.