Honda’s factory riders look to have settled on an engine specfication for the 2018 MotoGP season after concentrating on just one version so far at the Buriram test.

At Sepang, Marc Marquez, Dani Pedrosa and Cal Crutchlow had three options of the RC213V powerplant to evaluate but after studying data and feeding back information to Japan, the choice is ‘much clearer’. However, there is still work to do as air temperatures and gearing are still factors that have to be worked out.

“We concentrated more on the last version because after we analyzed the Sepang test data, the Japanese staff believe in that direction. All three riders who tried that engine, we believe it also. We need to manage a few problems still, but we are concentrating on that direction, to be clear,” said Marquez, speaking at Buriram.

“It’s difficult because Malaysia and Buriram, the track temperatures are very similar, and it’s difficult to understand the engine, especially.

“Because when you feel the engine there is less torque, so we need more torque. But then when we arrive in Europe with a shorter gearbox on shorter tracks, it would be too much torque.”

“They’ve definitely improved the engine,” Crutchlow said. “The acceleration? I don’t know. We have to look at Malaysia and compare data a lot more. Them sort of corners like turn one and the last corner really don’t suit my style.

“So to be quite strong in sector one, maybe I’ve adapted my style a bit to help that as well. We got the new Honda engine but we need to work on the rest of the bike.

  I think they listened a lot to what we requested from the end of last year and it seems that we have something a lot better now. Essentially, a lot of the bike is the same and we’re struggling with the same stuff we were struggling with last year.

“I don’t think we just gained with the engine. That’s not where we just gained, sure, because we’re gaining on the braking and in the corner speed. But we have some more power and it definitely helps. We still need to make the bike a little more rideable.”