Repsol Honda MotoGP king Marc Marquez found some setup direction on the final day of testing in Qatar after rummaging around in the HRC parts bin.

The reigning champion - along with the other RC213V riders - has been struggling to get the 2020 bike to turn through Losail’s long corners. A problem exacerbated by the desert track’s long, fast corners.

” was riding very good, we understand many things, we test some 2019 parts to try understand where was the problem and we found the problem,” said Marquez, speaking at the track.

“So this is the most important thing of the pre-season, not only of the day, because yesterday we were very far and was not enjoying riding the bike, and today I enjoyed it and we were much closer.

We found the way. Already in Malaysia there was some problems that I didn’t understand, some strange crashes in the fast corners that normally I’d save but I was struggling a lot, and yesterday, again, another strange crash.

“Maybe I’m thinking always about my physical condition, I say ‘I’m riding the same like always’, but then I saw that all of the riders were struggling; not only my team-mate, who is a rookie, but also Cal.”

All the Honda men have been complaining about front feeling, or lack of it, but some aero from 2019 seems to have done the trick.

“We were missing the front feeling. The entry of the corner was not good, and then we didn’t have the speed of the turning. And then we tried to recover the grip on the exit – the speed what we lose on the entry – and then we lose the grip. So, entry improved, mid-corner improved, so exit was faster.

“We tried a different chassis too at the end of the day,” he added. “The problem is all the work we did this pre-season was not working and always… we start in one point, we try many things, and we finish in the same starting point. So now that we found the problem, we need to re-try all the things.”

Team boss Alberto Puig confirmed they had tried Taka Nakagami's bike but had also gone back even further: "We have tried things from last year but also from two or three years ago. We are trying to improve however we can."