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Honda’s third season in the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship with a full factory structure is outlined with the sign of renewal. The signing of young Spanish duo, Iker Lecuona, 22, and Xavi Vierge, 24, was a significant change in the Team HRC. In the first season seasons of the Team HRC project, motorcycle racing veterans Alvaro Bautista and Leon Haslam led the way.

Now, with less than two weeks to go before the racing action gets underway in 2022, Team Manager Leon Camier’s team has taken shape. The duo of rookies is completing the adaptation to their new paddock and the dynamics inside the Team HRC garage, with encouraging results. In the technical section, the changes are significant too.

With different sporting careers and riding styles, Valencian rider Lecuona and Barcelonan Vierge have converged on the essentials: a fluid assimilation of the secrets of the Honda CBR1000RR-R and the ability to go fast with it. This was already seen in tests throughout the off-season, but significantly at the Catalunya test where Lecuona was third and Vierge eighth on Day 2; a test that featured all five factory squads.

The only down point on this remarkable learning curve is the last-minute injury to former Moto2™ rider Vierge after a fall on the wet asphalt at Turn 12, the long right-hander, that led to a fractured rib. Regardless of the question mark this incident poses for Vierge’s debut in Aragon, there is optimism in the Honda garage after seeing the performance of the 2022 package during the first test with all their rivals.

If the new duo has enthusiastically embraced the challenge of being chosen to fight for podiums and victories, Camier’s hand has been felt in the technical and strategic decisions made internally. Now in his second year as Team Manager, the former British rider is leading, together with Japanese engineers, a quiet revolution that is making a deep impression on the body of the 2022 Fireblade CBR1000RR-R.

Already in the first pre-season tests, significant changes were seen in the suspension and braking system, and it was soon confirmed that Honda had teamed up with suppliers Showa and Nissin in search of improvements in these two aspects. In the subsequent tests, the team has worked on various other aspects of the machine including refining the electronics, a new exhaust and new cooling solutions on the brakes.

The changes also reach the organisational chart within the team, with the hiring of the experienced Pete Jennings as crew chief to work alongside Lecuona and help the former MotoGP™ rider in his transition to WorldSBK. Vierge, meanwhile, has Gorka Segura on his side of the garage, an engineer with extensive experience in MotoGP™ who joined the HRC project in 2020, coinciding with the return of the Japanese factory as a fully official team. In addition, and as other WorldSBK manufacturers have done, Honda have increased the number of bikes on the 2022 grid to four with the signing of Malaysian rider Hafizh Syahrin, who will form a team with Leandro Mercado in the MIE Racing Honda Team.

In short, it’s a change on all fronts to definitely to take Honda to the top of the hierarchy in WorldSBK. On the near horizon is the goal of achieving the brand’s first triumph since 2016, when Nicky Hayden climbed to the top of the podium in Sepang. But, going further, the most desired goal is none other than to win the world crown that the Japanese manufacturer have achieved three times in the new millennium, in 2000, 2002 and 2007, but that has eluded them for 14 years.

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