Of the two Ducati riders that didn’t win a grand prix, Alex Marquez still took a pair of Sprint victories while Luca Marini claimed his first premier-class podiums.

But Zarco now moves from the top manufacturer in the constructors’ table to the bottom, with a switch to LCR Honda.

However, whilst praising the versatility of the Ducati in the hands of many different riders, the Frenchman insists the other MotoGP manufacturers are only a few changes away from the top.

“What Ducati has been incredible at is to make a bike that all riders can win on,” he explained.

“They give the opportunity to each rider to win races and to fight for podiums, by finding for everyone a good feeling on the bike.

“This is where they have been fantastic.

“But when you analyse everything, the [performance] difference is not so big and that’s what gives a lot of hopes for the others.

“Because it will be one change, or a few changes, that will bring the other bikes also on the top.”

As well as a long-awaited debut MotoGP win, Zarco signed off his third and final season at Pramac by contributing to an historic victory in the teams’ world championship, alongside title runner-up Jorge Martin.

“It’s really nice when you are looking back on this season and the nice podiums that [Martin and I] have shared together,” Zarco said.

“I started this season well and got more points than Jorge, but from his win in the Sprint race in Le Mans, Jorge has been incredible, almost not leaving the podium and fighting for the title.

“We could not expect [to also fight for the teams’ title] at the beginning of the season, maybe thinking that [factory Ducati duo] Pecco and Bastianini would have been taking the most points.

“So I’m pretty proud that I’ve been part of it.”

Zarco, 17th but one-second from the top for LCR Honda at the Valencia test, will be back on an RC213V at the Sepang test early next month.

But the Spaniard, switching to Monster Yamaha for 2024, has been told it could take until next March or April for his leg fractures to fully heal.

Rins suffered the injuries at Mugello in June, but then required further surgery due to ongoing pain upon his return in the recent flyaway rounds.

“During my last GP in Australia, we did an x-ray in Melbourne on Saturday morning because I was feeling a lot of muscular pain in my leg,” Rins said.

“It looked like I had a hernia so we flew directly to Madrid to make a surgery to improve this pain. They operated in the morning, and at night I left the hospital.

“The doctors did a fantastic job. I walked home as the pain improved immediately!

“This last month I’ve been working as hard as possible at home to be here in Valencia.

“It’s a shame it is the last race because now I’m feeling more or less better than before. Anyway, we have this weekend to enjoy and to ride, and to say goodbye to LCR.

“It is an amazing team, we had a very difficult season with injury, but we did a great result in Austin to get the victory.”

Rins, who won last year’s Valencia finale for Suzuki, recently tested the condition of his right leg during a track day in Barcelona.

“I rode the production bike in Montmelo. It was quite nice. Montmelo has the right then left and then the long right corner and I had zero pain,” he said. “We need to remember it is a production bike and not a MotoGP bike, the power and brakes are not the same, but it was a great test.”

Nonetheless, it could take until the 2024 season opener in Qatar on March 10 for his leg to fully recover.

“It was not a clean fracture. So to be at 100%, they said I need nine to ten months to recover everything but now we are in good shape,” Rins explained.

“The pain is very low during the day. I am walking perfectly. I think the next step is to jump on the bike, we have more muscle on the leg than before, so I think it is going to be ok.”

Next Tuesday’s test will see Rins ride his third different MotoGP bike in just over a year.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “It’s a big challenge, because you change everything, your team, your group, your crew chief, but I did it last year [also].”

The Spaniard, who won the 2022 Valencia finale for Suzuki, continues to recover from complicated leg fractures at Mugello in May.

Although he took part in the grands prix of Japan, Indonesia and Australia (Friday), ongoing pain forced another round of surgery and Rins was replaced by Iker Lecuona for the Malaysian and Qatar rounds.

The COTA winner, who is joining Monster Yamaha for 2024, will now make his final RC213V appearance this weekend before an M1 debut at the Tuesday test.

Rins’ 2-1 results at COTA remain the highest-scoring weekend of the season for a Honda rider, with the 34 points scored comfortably clear of the 19 for Marc Marquez during his best event (Motegi).

However, Rins has scored just 20 points from his other Honda appearances.

Johann Zarco will leave Pramac Ducati to take over Rins’ seat at LCR next season, alongside Takaaki Nakagami.

 

The LCR Honda rider, who fractured his right tibia and fibula at Mugello, was a competitive twelfth quickest on Friday at Phillip Island.

But the Spaniard continues to struggle with pain from the injury, requiring anaesthetic in Indonesia, and MotoGP Doctors advised him to halt his Australian weekend and undergo further scans.

“I spoke with [MotoGP’s] Doctor Charte, who had spoken with my doctors in Madrid. And they said the best option is to make a CT scan on the leg,” Rins said.

“We went to Melbourne to make this CT scan. Luckily, also with the crash [on Friday] and with the effort I did in Mandalika there were no displacements of the plates, the bones and everything.”

That also means there is no clear cause for the pain Rins is experiencing, which seems to be different to the nerve issues earlier in his recovery,

“In Mandalika, I was using some anaesthetic. But [it only works] for 10-13 laps and putting every time anaesthetic on the leg you can get inflammation. You can get something bad on the muscle,” Rins said.

“I will fly to Madrid [on Sunday], check with my doctors and make a plan. If we can go to Burnham, we will go to Buriram. If not, we will stay [in Europe] and recover.”

The COTA winner, who is moving to Monster Yamaha next season, added that his original target had been to return for Buriram, this weekend, or the following Sepang round.

“So what we did in Mandalika and here on the first day was like extra, so let’s see if I can recover a little bit more,” he said.

Last year’s Phillip Island winner for Suzuki, Rins was the fastest Honda rider, in 12th, on Friday, when he also walked away from an accident.

The pain is not thought to be related to that spill, with Rins previously speaking of nerve issues during his recovery from the fractured tibia and fibula suffered at Mugello in May.

Rins will now undergo scans to try and determine the source of his ongoing leg pain.

The LCR rider, winner at COTA this year, completed his first grand prix since the accident in 14th place at Mandalika last weekend.

The Spaniard’s withdraw from Phillip Island means that, after 16 rounds, MotoGP still hasn’t had a single race featuring the full 22-rider line-up.

At least one rider had been sidelined by injury since Pol Espargaro’s accident in practice for the Portimao season opener.

Rins is switching to the Monster Yamaha team next season and is due to make his M1 debut at next month’s Valencia post-season test.

The Japanese has spent all six years of his MotoGP career with Honda, at the satellite LCR team.

That compares with just one year of Honda experience for Marquez’s current team-mate Joan Mir and three Honda appearances, in 2019, for Nakagami’s proposed future team-mate Johann Zarco. The #93’s replacement is yet to be announced.

Nakagami joined MotoGP when Honda was on top of the world with titles for Marquez in 2018 and 2019. But the Spaniard’s Jerez 2020 arm injury triggered a downward spiral for HRC that culminated in a winless 2022.

Nakagami’s team-mate Alex Rins returned Honda to the top step with a shock victory in COTA this year, before joining Mir and Marquez on the early season injury list.

With five rounds to go, there is currently no Honda rider in the top 15 of the world championship standings.

“For six years, I know how Honda’s bike works and how it’s been changing every year,” Nakagami said.

“I want to help for the development [next year] and hopefully HRC [will] listen more to the comments of more riders. Not only Factory team, maybe more LCR team.

“If we can help, if we can have more responsibilities, it will be more than nice!”

Despite his experience, and while Zarco’s name is among those being linked with possibly replacing Marquez at Repsol, Nakagami all but ruled out switching to the factory team.

“This is almost 0% because I’m really happy with this team and our main sponsor is Idemitsu. So this is kind of the Idemitsu project and I’m really happy to stay with this team,” he said.

Nakagami, the only Honda rider not to miss races due to injuries this year, starts the final five rounds of the season 18th in the world championship, four points behind team-mate Rins.

Rins returned to action at Mandalika last weekend, where he finished as the top Honda in ninth place, after accidents for Marquez and Mir and a soft tyre gamble by Nakagami, who took the flag in eleventh.

Michelin had warned riders against using the soft rear for the full 27-lap grand prix.

“Michelin strongly suggested not to use the soft because of the high chance that it will blister,” acknowledged Nakagami, who was one of five riders to nonetheless try and make the soft last.

“But for us, with Honda’s bike it looks like from medium to soft is quite a big change. The soft compound was working quite well and even for the medium we didn’t know how the long distance would be.

“So in both cases, it looked like a risk, but of course, the high risk was the soft compound. But the soft gives more confidence and I knew that from the beginning of the race, I am able to attack.

“I used that the high potential at the beginning of the race [rising from 20th to 9th]. But I didn’t expect that big a drop.”

The Japanese added: “It was really difficult to stop the bike and the rear tyre performance had a huge drop. So at the end was really difficult to manage on the bike.

“But I’m quite happy about, from P20 and today another P11, same as yesterday, and gained a lot of positions. Of course, many riders crashed, was really tricky and really tough conditions.

“We made a quite big step on the bike balance and I’m quite happy about the feeling on the bike, especially at the beginning of the race. In the Sprint and then [GP} on the first and second laps I was able to gain many positions.

“So some areas is positive, but we took a gamble and we lost at the end but it was a little bit positive weekend for us. So head down and let’s keep working. Hopefully, we will try to fight in the top ten in Australia, this is the next target for us.”

The Australian MotoGP starts on Friday.

The former Suzuki rider, whose recovery has been complicated by nerve pain, got the go-ahead to travel to Japan by his Doctors in Madrid.

“The bone is regenerating, the recovery is progressing, so we are trying the next step, which is riding a MotoGP [bike] to see how we feel,” Rins posted on social media upon arrival in Japan

However, Rins, who is still walking with the aid of a crutch, still needed to pass a Thursday medical check in order to take part in the Motegi event.

That has now been successfully completed and Rins will thus take to the track on Friday morning.

Rins broke Honda’s victory drought in his third event on an RCV, at COTA, but his best result outside of Texas – from the five rounds he has contested – was only ninth.

Also disappointed by the slow pace of upgrades relative to the factory Repsol team, Rins signed for Monster Yamaha during the summer break meaning Motegi is set to be his one and only Japanese Grand Prix for Honda.

 

A double Moto2 race winner, the Japanese stepped up to the premier-class with LCR in 2018 and has remained with Lucio Cecchinello’s team ever since.

Nakagami’s best season to date was 2020, when he claimed a career-best fourth on two occasions plus pole position at Aragon on his way to tenth in the standings.

The 31-year-old’s fortunes since have mirrored the general decline of the RC213V, slipping to 15th in 2021 and 18th last year, when he was nonetheless evenly matched with Alex Marquez – who has taken a Grand Prix podium and Sprint win after switching to Gresini Ducati this season.

Lucio Cecchinello announced: “I’m proud to count on Nakagami for another year. He’s a fast rider who can get good results, and alongside HRC, we believe it’s time to keep pushing, as he’s one of the most experienced guys with this bike. We will give our best to fight for the positions we aim for”.

“I feel LCR is part of my family, and of course, I’m excited to be with them for another season,” Nakagami said. “I want to thank them and HRC for the opportunity, as I know we are a good match. Now it’s time to work even harder to be ready for the future.”

Nakagami will have his third different team-mate in three seasons with Johann Zarco replacing Alex Rins next year.

The LCR announcement means that only the Gresini Ducati seat occupied by Fabio di Giannantonio remains officially open for 2024, although KTM still needs to find a place for Pedro Acosta.

The Japanese has been an LCR rider since joining the premier-class in 2018, peaking at tenth overall in the 2020 standings.

Nakagami’s race seat was under pressure from Moto2 title contender Ai Ogura last year.

But with Ogura injured at the start of this year, new LCR team-mate Alex Rins leaving at the end of this season and Nakagami – the only Honda rider not to miss 2023 races due to injury – gI’ven the first chance to try new parts such as the Honda aero package, all the signs are that Nakagami will stay and join new signing Johann Zarco.

“I had some meetings with HRC in the past, at Assen before the summer break and also last race in Austria, with Kuwata-san. My future is almost fixed. 99.9% I will stay in the same team. This is what I can say now,” said Nakagami.

“Of course for myself it’s really pleasing to stay with the same team, with LCR Honda Idemitsu, because I like this team, and all the mechanics who support me in my team. So of course I’m really happy.

“And also I want to help develop the bike, because we have still lost the way, it’s a difficult situation. So we will try to improve the situation as soon as possible. But I hope in 2024 we will make a big step and try to be competitive, this is the target.”

Nakagami, whose former team-mate Alex Marquez has celebrated a podium and Sprint win at Gresini Ducati this year, has a best finish of eighth so far this year.

Although 17th in the world championship, injuries for Repsol Honda riders Marc Marquez and Joan Mir, means Nakagami is the second-highest Honda after COTA winner Rins (14th, but currently sidelined by injuries).

Rins may have broken Honda’s MotoGP win drought at COTA but the former Suzuki rider continued to be left down the pecking order for new parts and was ‘looking lonely’ at LCR.

As such, although Yamaha is also struggling this season and yet to win a race, the chance to have the full support of a factory will have made the decision ‘easy’.

Grand prix winner and Dorna’s pit lane reporter Simon Crafar told MotoGP.com: “Yamaha are not in the best situation either at the moment, but the way I see it, if Honda had made Alex feel like a factory rider even though he was in a satellite team it would have been a hard decision.

“But looking from the outside they haven’t done that. He’s looked lonely and close to… I would even venture to say ignored in that satellite team. Even after his win. That’s my gut feeling.

“Then the decision is so easy if [another] manufacturer comes to you and says, ‘Do you want to be our factory rider?’ You’ve got to do it.

“Both manufacturers I think are going to improve next year,” Crafar added.

“I think it’s an inspired move by [Yamaha Racing boss] Lin Jarvis. My only concern is that Alex has been through a lot with this injury and even before the injury he’s had a tough time.

“Yes, he had the win in Austin, but he’s basically otherwise gone through what Joan Mir has gone through.

“That’s not easy to come back from, plus the injury, but he’s an absolute natural and he’ll be back on a bike similar to the Suzuki.

“I look forward to seeing what happens.”