Honda ‘doesn’t have a fantastic package’ after day one of Buriram MotoGP test

Honda MotoGP rider Joan Mir admits the brand doesn’t “have a fantastic package” yet ahead of the 2026 season, following a troubled day one of the Buriram test.

The Japanese manufacturer comes into the new campaign looking to build on its strong rebuild in 2025, where it managed a win and three other podiums.

Honda looks like it is continuing in the right trend following a solid Sepang test, while it was fifth overall at the end of day one at the Buriram test on Saturday.

Joan Mir was seventh, having been left with only one bike to use because of a technical problem, but was pleased with the time attack effort he was able to produce.

That said, he admitted Honda is still far from putting together a complete package.

“It was a little bit more complicated than I expected, because at the beginning of the day we had a problem with one of our bikes and we have to understand what happened, because we don’t know,” Mir began.

“And then when we moved to the other bike, something wasn’t right with that bike.

“So, we lost the morning, we wasted it. Then we started to work hard from midday to the afternoon, and it was positive.

“We don’t have a fantastic package at the moment, but it’s true it allowed us to make a good lap time.

“I rode completely alone. It was not a bad lap time for the first day here.

“It’s true that here you cannot miss anything because the lap times are super close, because the track is not super difficult. So, that creates a lot of equality in the top 10.”

The 2020 world champion added that the technical issue he experienced with one of his bikes meant Honda was unable to carry out any back-to-back comparisons on new set-up solutions.

“We have more work than what I expected because of this thing in the morning,” he noted.

“They have worked today to understand many things, because when you only work with one bike, normally it’s the bike you try different things, and we tried things without comparing to our base because we had that problem.

“And this complicated the day a little bit, but we could figure it out.”