Ducati is still winning all the time, even with its hand-me-down bikes, while Aprilia's RS-GP has had a transformational season. But it's Honda that might be the ascendant MotoGP manufacturer right now.
The concessions-aided development effort, supercharged by the additions of tech guru Romano Albesiano from Aprilia and top-level test riders in Aleix Espargaro and Takaaki Nakagami, is very clearly paying off.
The Honda RC213V, a laughing stock as recently as last year, has taken up permanent residence in the top 10 and is now sniping podiums on merit. It is no longer a true disaster at seemingly any track - by riders' accounts, it's kind of decent-to-good at everything, having improved the engine, the chassis, the swingarm, the aero.
"It's long. This answer is long," said Luca Marini when asked to list off the improvements Honda has made from the start of the year.
"I think we worked well in every detail, in every aspect. We solved a little bit the braking, we solved a lot the entry phase, that at the beginning was a problem. We solved mid-corner and turning - still sometimes we don't have enough grip, edge grip, this is something that we're going to keep working on, but on the drive area now the bike is very good, on the wheelie phase it's good, the aero made a step - but still there is so much room for improvements.
"I think that all the crew, all the engineers, started to work very well, with a good synergy all together, also with the mechanics.
"There was never a step back. Every time Honda brought some stuff, we tried: if it was good we kept it on the bike; if it's bad, throw away and another piece maybe arrives. We worked very well and every GP we made a little step, and never came back."
In other words, not everything has worked necessarily, but no wrong turns have been taken, no developmental dead ends pursued. It has been so fruitful that Honda is now at serious risk of losing its 'Rank D' concession status for next year, having scored 35.9% of the available manufacturers' points so far, and needing to end the year on under 35%.
But it was going to have to shed that Rank D status at some point. And there is already a lot of positive testimony from the riders on the 2026 prototype - while it is clearly well-positioned for the 2027 regulations reset, especially with engine specialist Kurt Trieb, brought on from KTM, apparently already fully focused on the upcoming 850cc unit.
Honda could barely get riders to sign up for its bike two years ago, around when Marc Marquez walked away. It is not in that position now. Every rider in the field - including, yes, Marquez - must tell their agent that, if Honda's calling, you pick up and engage.
So is it suboptimal then that Honda already has two riders under contract for 2027?
There is all of one known other rider deal covering 2027 in MotoGP right now: Toprak Razgatlioglu at Yamaha. The rest of the field is, publicly anyway, uncommitted. Honda, unless it somehow expands to a third team, has already settled half of its line-up.
How it got here was clear and fairly rational. Diogo Moreira was hot property and Honda needed to beat Yamaha to his signing, which it apparently did with a three-year deal that initially places him at LCR. And Johann Zarco has been a monumental success since his 2024 arrival, so warranted another two-year commitment to keep him happy with continuing at LCR.
Those are great deals in a vacuum. And Moreira, certainly, has done nothing but made his contract look better since it was agreed - having gone in that time from Moto2 title outsider to Moto2 title favourite.
The Zarco situation is different. Seemingly for a combination of reasons, he has just not been particularly productive over the last few months. This is reflected in both the points-scoring and in more subjective measures, such as the rider rankings feature we do at The Race.
2025 championship points
Up to and including Silverstone (round 7)
Johann Zarco - 97
Luca Marini - 38
Joan Mir - 18
Since Silverstone (rounds 8-20)
Luca Marini - 90
Joan Mir - 75
Johann Zarco - 37
Average rankings position
Up to (and including) Silverstone
Johann Zarco - 7.7
Luca Marini - 11.4
Joan Mir - 12.9
Since Silverstone
Luca Marini - 7.6
Joan Mir - 10.9
Johann Zarco - 13.6
Zarco is a bit of a confidence rider, and something mid-season took him down the wrong path in that regard, though the origin is difficult to trace.
For a bit of time his sudden underperformance relative to Marini in particular was being attributed to an older-spec bike, but the introduction on the upgrades to Zarco's LCR machine has not proven an overnight cure-all. There was an improvement at Sepang, but it was clear to see that on pure performance he was still very much the third of the Hondas.
"Overall this weekend I gained some confidence back, which is pretty important," said Zarco at Sepang. "I was losing confidence, and with this bike it's not fun when you lose confidence. But I really need to...I hope I will find this small range of set-up from the bike to enjoy more the riding, because I see that the way I can ride [right now] is not very natural.
"I can attack, I can try to do a good qualifying, but when it's not very natural to ride, then when the tyre gets used, I can have this kind of situation of fighting with the bike more than controlling the bike. So I'm a bit disappointed for this.
"I need to go through the steps again, to catch a good result in the future.
"I told the team even before the race that the situation in Honda is clearly much better than one year ago. If I can ride this bike well, the top five is there. But I feel that the way I'm riding is not a good way.
"My base set-up at Honda - on this new package, we tried for a few races to make it work, and it seems it doesn't work. I need to really open my mind to another way of setting the bike, and maybe to readapt the riding style."
Whatever the internal policy at Honda, it's clear that Zarco hasn't been maximised as of late. He feels that he's at an experience deficit to Marini and Joan Mir when it comes to the upgrade, and that he has been really missing a weekend of just having two same-spec upgraded bikes in his garage to be able to quickly back-to-back test set-ups.
Why he hadn't been prioritised within the Honda development pipeline, given he was its best rider by far for 1.5 years, is a question that will probably be answered down the line, but for now all this just seems a little incongruent with the two-year deal announced on September 1.
And it's clearly not a deal that everyone is thrilled with. To know that, you need only to see the two remarkable answers given by factory Honda team manager Alberto Puig when asked recently about the Zarco deal.
Answer one, when asked about it generally: "Here I cannot answer because I wasn't involved in that operation. It was handled directly from Japan, I wasn't involved."
Answer two, when asked specifically whether it's unusual to have committed to a 35-year-old into 2027: "I insisted that I can't help you with this topic, because I didn't participate in those negotiations or his contracting. If you want to know more, you need to speak to those who made the deal."
It's long been rumoured that Puig isn't the biggest Zarco proponent at Honda. If he was indeed a sceptic of the contract, that will not have changed since the deal was agreed.
But the bigger issue is that, after a year and a half of being a Honda superstar, Zarco isn't currently performing commensurately to the existing long-term commitment - but also hasn't been treated in a way that reflects that commitment.
It is not a factory seat, but it is a factory contract. Even if, say, Marquez doesn't want to come back, what if Fabio Quartararo is interested? What if Pedro Acosta wants to join? What if Jorge Martin is still keen? Every single one of those scenarios is, on paper, very realistic. And what if the terms are such that you can actually afford two of the three, which would mean properly stacking the deck for a 2027 title bid?
It would mean discarding Marini and Mir. It would also mean no room to sign anyone else out of Moto2 - no David Alonso, no Dani Holgado, no whoever else. Unless you actively want to get a third team.
Zarco certainly earned his deal. Moreira looks like a coup. But Honda is a more attractive destination now than it was even as a recently as when those deals were signed. Expect the fight for the ones it has free in 2027 to be as heated as ever - as long as it plays its remaining cards right.
