Peanut butter and jelly. Vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. Seafood and paella.
For the past 30 years, Repsol and Honda have formed a duo almost as iconic in MotoGP as the food items listed above. As a longtime fan, it's to the point where it's almost difficult to think about one without the other.
Yet apparently, at the end of 2024, Repsol's sponsorship of the Honda MotoGP team is about to come to an end, as we've learned this news thanks to our colleagues at Motorsport.com.
To be honest, it's not entirely unexpected. While the three decades of partnership have so far resulted in a total of 15 championships (six of which were with Marc Márquez in the premiere class), 183 victories, and 455 podiums, so far, the 2024 season doesn't look as though it's going to add to any of those numbers.
Things between Repsol and the Honda MotoGP team noticeably and publicly cooled off in the wake of Márquez' departure to Gresini pastures.
Even if you don't normally pay attention to this stuff, if you watched MotoGP racing in 2023 and you've been watching it in 2024, then you've already likely noticed that the Repsol logo is much less prominent on the Repsol Honda MotoGP team's machines. (Seriously, just look at what the bikes used to look like.)
Well, except that maybe you haven't, because they haven't really gotten a lot of screen time during races. The factory riders currently racing for the team are Joan Mir and Luca Marini, but typically the most screen time either of them has gotten (as of May 28, 2024) has been during the race opening graphics that go through the entire list of racers who are lining up on the grid.
During actual races, we rarely see any screen time of either of the Repsol Honda machines during the 2024 MotoGP season, mainly because they've been struggling at the back during both the Sprints and Races.
Just to check our math, we went through the data to see where Mir and Marini have finished so far this season. After all, while we may have been watching the MotoGP season progress just like a lot of people around the world, human memories aren't perfect.
That's where data tells the tale.
During the 2024 MotoGP season thus far (as of the date of writing on May 28, 2024), the Repsol Honda team has so far only had one Sprint race finish in the top 10. That was Joan Mir in Spain, where he finished ninth.
So far, Mir has also had two Sprint race DNFs (Americas and France), and Marini has had one (Spain).
But wait, I hear you thinking. Maybe the 2024 Repsol Honda bikes do better in the full races, and aren't so great at the short-form Sprint races.
While the results here are slightly better, it's still not by a whole lot. It's not difficult to understand why Repsol might be reconsidering things right about now.
From these results, we can see that while it's true Mir generally finishes higher in the rankings than his teammate, Marini, he also doesn't always finish races. While Marini has finished all six races (and thus likely gathered valuable data for the team), Mir has had two DNFs so far during 2024 full race events (Americas and France).
So far, neither racer has cracked the top 10 during a 2024 MotoGP full-length racing event. There are still many more races to go in the 2024 season from the time of writing, so it's possible that this could change. But at the moment, it doesn't appear very likely.
The team not doing well translates to a lack of screen time and exposure for sponsors, including and especially prominent ones like Repsol.
While it's true that everyone wants to be part of a successful team, it's also true that sponsors want people to see whatever and whoever it is that they're sponsoring. If they don't, then those same sponsors start to wonder if their money couldn't be spent better elsewhere.
