Marc Marquez discusses his decision to leave Honda.
Marc Marquez has opened up on the timing of his Repsol Honda exit after leaving the team for Gresini Ducati in 2024. This move followed a series of challenging years characterized by injuries and surgeries to his right arm, coupled with struggles aboard an underperforming Honda RC213V.
Marquez’s time with Honda saw remarkable success, including dominant seasons in 2018 and 2019. Despite the numerous setbacks with Honda, Marquez managed to claim victories even amid ongoing arm issues. When reflecting on whether he regrets not leaving Honda any earlier, Marquez firmly stated:
“The most important thing is that when I retire, I don’t have any doubts about my decisions.
“Still, right now I’m riding a Ducati and next year I will be a [factory] Ducati rider. Of course, I will try to defend Ducati colours.
“But Honda has been and will be a very important part of my career, or maybe the most important part – you never know.
“But I was saying when I was in Honda – because sometimes [people] said, ‘Honda is Honda, he is winning for the Honda’. [But] there were other Hondas…”
The decision to join the Gresini Ducati team also involved financial sacrifices, leaving behind a lucrative contract with the factory Honda team for a satellite setup running a year-old Desmosedici. Despite these hurdles, the results appeared swiftly, with Marquez securing victories in three of the six most recent Grand Prix events, earning him third place in the current world championship standings, trailing only behind Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia.
“If you are a good rider, if you go to Honda and say, ‘I don’t care about the money, just I want to ride [your] best bike’, they will give to you [their] best bike if you are a good rider,” Marquez continued.
“So in this case I did the opposite. I go to Ducati and I said, ‘I don’t care about anything, I just want to ride the best bike’.”
He added:
“Now in the future when I will retire, I will be quiet about myself because I tried everything,” Marquez said.
“Of course, when you do that kind of move [to Ducati] you put a lot of pressure on yourself and there can be a lot of negative comments if you don’t achieve what you want.
“But I already achieved what I wanted.
“The target was to try to be longer in my career and try to feel competitive again. Then, if I win another title, this will be something in another hand.
“But my main goal is already done.”
