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This was definitely not a good year for HRC which, after so many great seasons with Marc Marquez, found itself in 2022 without even one win to its name. And in addition, it occupy the last position in the constructors' world championship after Ducati, Yamaha, Aprilia, KTM and Suzuki.
Koji Watanabe, President of Honda Racing Corporation, has been speaking about it, mentioning the company's goals for the near future as part of the "2023 Motorsport Announcement".
"In 2022 we were unable to celebrate a MotoGP victory, but Marc Márquez did bring us a podium in the second part of the season, at Phillip Island, Australia - said the Japanese manager, who then added - Our goal is the MotoGP title, this is the absolute priority".
Watanabe, who is also President of Honda, then lifted the veil on the development of the RC213-V which suffered from a big gap from the competition.
“The season has been very frustrating for us. To make improvements in the future, we are working with our automotive department on aerodynamic improvements for 2023. We are already seeing the first successes of this collaboration. In the future we will join our efforts to become more competitive again. Our clear goal is to bring back all three titles."
Koji Watanabe had recently also spoken about the situation in Formula 1, seeing as officially Honda has stepped aside, but a single-seater with the name of the glorious Japanese company still races and wins.
“Basically, our activities in F1 as Honda ended last year - he said - so in this sense there is no particular frustration (for having left F1, ed.). I am also the president of HRC, but the latter only provides technical assistance at the request of Red Bull and according to its requests. Therefore, we are not developing and producing power units on our own initiative, but we are collaborating with Red Bull on engine management in response to their requests, so there is no frustration at all."
When asked about the future of Honda's participation in motorsport, Watanabe was clear.
“Honda considers motorsport very important, so it was a difficult decision for us to leave F1. However, when the company decided to focus on developing zero-emission technology, there was no other way than to stop our activities in F1, which uses a lot of human resources. In fact, we developed the technology for this season until March this year, but then the development was frozen, so basically all HRD SAKURA engineers were transferred to the Advanced Technology Research Institute as planned. The only people who are left in HRC are those who can provide support to Red Bull, like assembly and so on. I think F1 is moving in the direction of carbon neutrality. We look at F1 with great interest. However, that doesn't mean we'll be returning to F1 anytime soon. We are not debating whether or not to return to F1, as we will continue to develop the technology we have decided to pursue."
