2022 Repsol HRC livery unveiled
Six-time MotoGP World Champion Marc Márquez and fellow Spaniard Pol Espargaró have launched the 2022 Repsol Honda Team livery as the new season start rapidly approaches.
After three race wins between the two in the 2021 season, the team will be eager to return to the sort of majestic form that saw Márquez bank six titles in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
The 28-year-old has endured a difficult spell during the past two seasons and has battled for power in his right shoulder following the bad break to his right arm incurred at the 2020 Spanish GP.
Marc Marquez begins 2022 fully recovered from the diplopia which ended his 2021 campaign early. The last two injury-hit seasons have not quelled his hunger and the eight-time World Champion is as determined to fight for the title in his tenth season with the Repsol Honda Team as in his first season.
Since stepping up to the premier class in 2013, Marquez has earned six MotoGP World Championship titles, won 59 races, finished on the podium 99 times, and earned pole position on 62 occasions – all with the iconic Repsol Honda Team. All of these are numbers which Marquez is aiming to increase in 2022.
Marc Márquez
“Ten seasons already in MotoGP and ten seasons in the Repsol Honda Team is a dream. I mean it’s something I couldn’t imagine in my best dreams, of course also during these ten years we have achieved very good results, so for sure this is something special and I want to enjoy it. I know we will try to win the title to celebrate it well! My goal this year is to try and fight for the championship. We have started the season well already in Malaysia and now we prepare to head forward to this test in Mandalika and continue our preparations.”
Pol Espargaro enters his second year with the Repsol Honda Team after a learning year in 2021. A pole position at the British GP and achieving his best finish in the premier class to date with second place at the Emilia Romagna GP were undoubted highlights of a year full of steady and consistent progress and growth for the 2013 Moto2 World Champion. Continuing to improve and fight in and amongst the leading riders at each race remains the #44’s goal for this new season as he aims to bring further success to the Repsol Honda Team.
Pol Espargaro
“I approach this season with more experience which at the end is one of the most important things in MotoGP. We have just five days of testing and knowing already how the team is, how the bike is, what I’m going to find there is already something very important, very big. You know through the year with a new bike we are going to improve it and make it even greater, but I think that the beginning point is great, and I think that from Qatar on we will feel ready to fight for something great which is our target. Let’s keep working now in Indonesia.”
Honda HRC celebrate their 40th anniversary in 2022 and, alongside a new logo, Honda’s four-wheeled competition efforts have been brought under the iconic banner while a revised livery adorns a heavily updated 2022 Repsol Honda Team RC213V – the machine a new Saitama concept.
New aero dynamics complement the revised chassis and upgraded engine for 2022 in the 28th year of the successful collaboration between Honda and Repsol, the iconic colours a consistent track sight.
Tetsuhiro Kuwata – HRC Director
“I think it is the biggest change we have seen during the current regulation period. The concept of the 2022 machine is ‘break out of our shell’ to improve the performance so the whole of the machine is completely different from the last two years. We changed the engine, chassis, and the electronics with this concept. We already applied this new concept from the last year, and we have already checked the performance of the new machine concept and we could confirm that it works to improve our weak points. So, this 2022 machine has further evolutions with the same direction.”
With 15 World Championships, 452 premier class podiums and 183 race wins, the Repsol Honda Team remains the most decorated team in Grand Prix racing and main reference point in two-wheeled motorsport.
After a successful test in Sepang, Malaysia, Márquez and Espargaró are now preparing for a new challenge at the Mandalika Circuit in Indonesia where they will have three more days of riding before the 2022 MotoGP World Championship begins at the Losail International Circuit, Qatar on March 6.
Source: MCNews.com.au