Marc Marquez will race for Gresini Ducati in MotoGP next year after Honda announced on Wednesday the eight-time world champion will leave the Japanese manufacturer at the end of 2023.
By mutual agreement, Marquez and Honda will break one of the most fruitful alliances in the history of MotoGP, which has yielded a total of six world titles over eleven seasons between 2013 and 2023.
While able to win three races in 2021, Marquez hasn't stood on top of a grand prix podium since October of that year, with the competitiveness of the RC213V worsening over the last two seasons. Although the Italian team would have preferred to close a deal that would go beyond 2024, the alliance will have an initial validity of only one year, since the rider wants to have absolute freedom to consider his future in 2025, when the bulk of the contracts expire.
Motorsport.com understands that Marquez, at 31, will face this new stage in his career without the complicity of the human group that has accompanied him since his days in Moto2.Despite attempts to take his technicians with him, Marquez will land at Gresini alone, after Ducati showed its reluctance to show the innards of the most dominant bike of the moment to engineers who in 2025 could sign for any competing company.
Alberto Puig, HRC's team manager, has worked in recent weeks on a plan that had no other objective than to try to avoid the departure of Honda's main claim.However, the little room for manoeuvre that the executive had - he did not receive the green light from the top brass at Honda to the hiring plan until the Austrian Grand Prix - and the refusal of the most renowned European engineers to join the fold, played a major role in the outcome of this soap opera.
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