Luca Marini wants “spicy pieces” from HRC despite expected 2027 MotoGP departure
Luca Marini says he wants more from Honda in MotoGP this season despite his expected departure at the end of the year.
Honda’s Luca Marini says he wants “some more spicy pieces” from Honda in the second half of the 2026 MotoGP season despite his expected departure from the Japanese factory at the end of the year.
Marini’s future is uncertain at present. There are links with the Tech3 KTM team, but either way his time at Honda seems to be approaching its conclusion at the end of this year with Fabio Quartararo expected to join from Yamaha and David Alonso anticipated to step up from Moto2.
Nothing is yet confirmed for Honda’s 2027 line-up, apart from the departure of Joan Mir to Gresini, but the indications are that there will be no space for Marini.
But that does not mean the Italian is ready to give up on 2026 yet, and, after finishing eighth at Sachsenring, called for more development from HRC in the second half of the season despite his apparent departure and the regulation changes coming for next season.
“We achieved our best, the best that we could at the moment,” Luca Marini said of his eighth place at the German MotoGP.
“This is the potential that we showed during all this first half of the season. Better than P8 is difficult, apart from special occasions.
“So I'm quite satisfied about this weekend at the end.
“I think in this first half of the season, we tried really everything. Every detail, every setting, everything that we can try, we tried.
“At the end, the problems still always are the same, the feeling of the rider is always the same, and we need to keep pushing a little bit more the engineers and the Japanese to bring us some more spicy pieces for the future.”
Marini added: “We are talking for it because if you bring something for this season that also you can use in 2027, it's just collecting more data.
“So, why waste the time and wait for the future if we can try something this year and maybe improve our performance? Because we are not happy with P8.
“This is for sure because last year we were used to this position and we wanted to achieve a little bit better, but in this first half of the season it was not possible.
“We just keep pushing and doing our maximum every weekend as we did here.”
Alex joined the Crash.net team in August of 2024 having covered consumer and racing motorcycle news at Visordown for two years.
