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The 2023 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship is less than two weeks from the first round firing up and there are headlines everywhere you look as a new season of action and excitement edges closer. Ahead of another campaign of fighting hard and Championship challenges, there’s fighting talk from Team HRC, as their riders Iker Lecuona and Xavi Vierge – together with team manager Leon Camier – took part in a Q&A session with the media immediately after the launch of their 2023 colours. All of the key topics are below, whilst you can enjoy the 2023 livery here and read all about the technical upgrades throughout the WorldSBK field – including Honda – here!

CAMIER: “We want to see a step… let’s see if we can bridge the gap”

Starting with Camier, he gets ready for a third year of team management with Team HRC and hopes success is awaiting, whilst claiming that the super concession will help but is not the answer to everything: “I think the super concession that we got is to give us more adjustment; I think it’ll help us overall but I don’t think it’ll be the main difference that we need that all of a sudden, we’ll be fighting for race wins. There’re so many factors that have to be perfect for you to be at that point. We are still young in this Championship, so we need a little bit more time to get the package exactly correct for fighting for a title. I think in the right time and right place, we can fight for podiums and our goal is to make another step this year and keep improving the bike that we have. We want to see a step.”

Talking about the improvements elsewhere on the bike, Camier confirmed a variety of steps, whilst stating there’ll be hard work back in Japan to strengthen the project: “There’re lots of small things we’ve improved since last year, such as having torque in the right places with the engine and a bit more on acceleration. We’ve made a small step with electronics which should help us over race distance, which is something that if you have good enough hearing, you’ll understand what it is on the side of the track! There’re several items, such as swingarms as we’ve discussed before and we’ll have some other upgrades on that this year. Let’s see if we can bridge the gap and arrive to the lead group and also see if the parts that have come from Japan will allow us to do that earlier in the year. When we arrive to Europe, we’ll start to understand our position.”

Lecuona and Vierge: “I think we can do a very good second year in WorldSBK!”

Iker Lecuona is keen to start strongly and both he and Xavi Vierge stated the importance of not having to learn all the tracks like last year: “At the end, for now, we have already done two tests. In the first one, I struggled a lot but in the second one, I felt quite good with the bike and in a race simulation, I felt like we’ve found a good step in the second half of the race. This is the target; last year, we struggled a lot in the second half of the race, so I’ll try to improve it. It helps us a lot that we don’t need to learn the track. We have a base set up for the bike and on Friday, we don’t need to lose time to learn the track. This is a very positive point and a strong point for us. I don’t want to put a big goal this year; for sure, I want to win and fight for the podium and both of us have the potential, but we need a little bit more time. Maybe we can get a bit closer to the podium, but we’ll see. I’m very excited to start and I think we can do a very good second year in WorldSBK.”

“Of course, challenging for podiums is one of the main objectives this year,” began Vierge. “After one year of experience for us, we’re a big step ahead compared to 2022 and we’ll start the weekends with a great base and a lot of information from last year. We’ve worked a lot in the winter and in pre-season on our pace in the race, and this makes the difference in the last part of the race. We’re doing a good job and we hope to achieve the podiums as soon as possible. The season starts in a lot better place in Australia in their summer and then Indonesia. These are two circuits that I really like and that our bike works quite well, so we’ll try to take advantage to fight well. About being best Honda, this is my target and Iker and I are pushing ourselves to the limit. We’re improving together, which helps improve the team. I hope we don’t have bad injuries like last year, and I hope that we can fight until the end together.”

“We’ve improved our level… Alvaro with the new bike has a lot of potential and this package is unbelievable…”

Lecuona also commented on the strengths of Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) and Ducati as a package, whilst welcoming 2021 Moto2™ World Champion Remy Gardner: “Honestly, we’ve improved our level and we’re quite happy about the second part of the race in the race simulations. We need to wait until the first races to know our real level. I think we can fight for the second group, but not with the first one. Alvaro with the new bike has a lot of potential and this package is unbelievable. Jonny and Toprak, we know their level too. Maybe at the end of the year, we can fight but we need more time to understand the new parts of the bike and the new pieces.

“I was very happy to join this paddock and this team and I’m very happy here. I know Remy is happy as we live in Andorra, and we meet-up to do some snowboarding! He’s happy to be here and change the Championship. He needs to learn this world, and it’s completely different! He needs some time but I am sure he’s happy to join WorldSBK.”

“We made a big step… there could be six to eight riders fighting for the podium positions!”

Discussing making a “big step” compared to 2022, Vierge assessed his race pace after testing, whilst also predicting up to eight riders could be in the fight for the podium: “We found a base set-up and we improved it a lot on the race simulation. With respect to our race pace from last year, we improved on the hard tyres but then in both the tests, with the softer tyres, I struggled a little bit more. Our goal was to improve our race pace on the race tyres, and I think we achieved it. If we compare to ourselves from before, I think we made a big step forward and I’m looking forward to arriving to Australia to take profit of the next two days of testing.”

“I think in the last few years, the Championship level has grown a lot, especially this year as more riders have joined the grid,” Vierge continued. “I think there could be six to eight riders fighting for the podium positions, but at the same time it’s very difficult! All the bikes have a great level, so we need to focus on the small details in all the sessions.”

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