Honda's stuck in a replacement rider crisis
Luca Marini will be Honda's sole representative at this weekend's Australian Grand Prix, with factory MotoGP team-mate Joan Mir still medically unfit and the team's stable of test riders all sidelined through injuries of their own.
Mir has now missed four races in a row as he continues to find both the cause of and solution to his ongoing chronic fatigue issues, and will continue to recover as he misses this weekend's final race at Phillip Island.
"Joan Mir and his medical team are hard at work to return the #36 to the circuit but have deemed the Australian GP in Phillip Island too early and will continue to assess his condition," Honda said in a statement released on Wednesday.
This marks the continuation of Honda's ongoing woes with injury and illness.
Mir was first replaced at the Austrian Grand Prix last month by Honda test rider Taka Nakagami, but he then fell on the first lap of the weekend at Motegi during a wildcard appearance at his home race and is continuing to recover from a broken collarbone.
World Superbike racer Somkiat Chantra was in any case the Honda stand-in for the Motegi race, as Nakagami's wildcard was already scheduled, but he has not been asked back to replace 2020 world champion Mir this weekend despite his own season having concluded last weekend at Jerez.
Similarly, Nakagami's fellow test rider Aleix Espargaro will also not return to MotoGP race action after his own abortive replacement ride for Mir in Indonesia two weekends ago.
That marked Espargaro's first race action of the season and first since a Sepang testing crash in April, which left him with a broken spine that required surgery. He was forced to withdraw from Sunday's main race thanks to the physical demands of the Mandalika circuit and ahead of a test, again at Sepang, of Honda's new 850cc bike for 2027.
However, that test made three-time race winner's physical condition worse by exposing him to to arm pump, which will require surgical treatment this week in Spain, leaving Honda temporarily without any test riders.
Under MotoGP's regulations, teams are required to field a replacement rider should more than 10 days have passed between their current racer being declared unfit and the next race - although the increasing physical demands of the current format since the introduction of sprint races has increased the injury rate considerably, and as such enforcement of the rule has been allowed to slip.
With Tuesday's news that Pramac Yamaha's Toprak Razgatlioglu will sit out the remainder of the 2026 season due to shoulder injuries sustained in Indonesia, it means that the Brazilian GP, the second race of the season, will now be the only round of the 22-race calendar to have featured the full grid of 22 full-time riders.
