Marc Márquez leaving Honda is seem by many as a big blow for HRC given the time the manufacturer had to show signs of building a stronger bike for the next season, ending up with the rider coming to end the contract he had with the giant japanese while there was still one more season to fulfil. Alberto Puig says he felt ‘very disappointed’ with the rider leaving.
The Team Manager was asked by AS if he saw Márquez leaving as ‘a failure’, the spaniard commented: ‘Well, on a personal level I’m very disappointed, because the relationship I have with Marc is very good. On a company level, it’s obvious that we haven’t been able to make the bike he needed. It is also true that they have been very bad years. We have taken his worst years, because everything with the shoulder has been very complicated for him and for us’.
Puig them said that there was a lot of things happening that added up until the rider decided to leave: ‘In the end, there has been an accumulation of circumstances, almost all of them negative, which have not helped at all. I think that if Marc hadn’t had that accident in Jerez, things would have been different. He wouldn’t have stopped, he would have been on the bike and, surely, the bike would have evolved in a different way. Although talking about everything in the past is no good, of course’.
With Márquez already confirmed at Gresini, Puig says he hopes to see #93 perform well, and even taking wins, but assures he wants to beat him:
– When I have been with a rider who has left I have always been happy with his results. And in Marc’s case, probably even more so, because of the way he has treated me on a personal level. Obviously, he is a champion and all the fans of the motorbike world and all of us who feel involved in this, in my case having also been a rider, know that if he did well and won again it would be a milestone and, of course, I would be happy. I will be happy if Marquez wins again, but I want to beat him. That doesn’t take away from the fact that I work at Honda, that we have to develop a bike, that we are going to have riders and that our objective is to win, whoever it is.