One of the most interesting things we saw was that Stefan Bradl, and later Marc Marquez, did a couple runs with no aero on the bike at all. Why? It’s an interesting question to ask and one that actually has an answer that makes a lot of sense. As we know Honda are in a tricky position with their bike. For 2023, we suspect they’ve moved the engine again so once again Honda are in a place where they need to learn as much as possible about their machine before they can go on to make it better
One great way to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the bike is to take as many factors out as possible. Removing the aero allows Honda to gather data and info about exactly how the bike behaves on its own. From there, Honda can go and add the aero back on step by step to see how exactly each element impacts the bike from the baseline data they have gathered.