Is Honda Back on Top?

HONDA’S A FAST STARTER (JASON WEIGANDT)

I can’t really make any sense of this data. Team Honda’s glory days, with Dave Arnold and Roger De Coster at the helm, began in 1982 and essentially ended when the last dominant rider of that generation, Jeremy McGrath, left at the end of 1996 (by then Arnold and De Coster had already moved on, but McGrath and company were keeping winning traditions alive). The brand signed Ricky Carmichael for the 2002 season and Ricky, being Ricky, won just about everything in front of him for his three seasons on red, but beyond RC, who proved he can and will win on anything, Honda has tried and tried to get back to the promised land, but can never quite get there.

Here’s the data that is so weird: in season after season, Honda gets off to a hot start. Ezra Lusk winning early in ’98. An entire army of Honda riders getting off to a hot start in ’99 (Lusk won the first two AMA Supercross rounds, and Honda went 1-2-3-4-5 at the AMA Motocross opener, led by Sebastian Tortelli’s incredible 1-1). Carmichael’s success after that was end-to-end, but after that Honda enjoyed the riches of the GEICO Honda 250 program, getting riders like Trey Canard, Justin Barcia, and Eli Tomac into the mix. Again, those guys would win early and often. Like in 2013 when Canard nearly won the supercross opener after a huge battle with Davi Millsaps, and then a rookie Barcia won round two. They were arguably the two best riders at the start of that season, they couldn’t maintain it. Two years later, Tomac crushed the start of the 2015 Pro Motocross campaign, but he crashed out of it at round three. Then came the Roczen era, with many early season wins and lots of time with the red plate, but no titles. That includes this very season itself, when Roczen and Chase Sexton pulled away from the field at Anaheim 1. They only ended up with one race win each. Now we have another early-season Honda show, with Sexton and Roczen again pulling away from the field at Fox Raceway. One of these years has to be the year, right? Honda hasn’t won a 450 title since Carmichael left at the end of ’04.

It’s a strange thing. Honda has rotated through many bikes, team managers, technicians, mechanics, riders, and all during the last 18 years. You really can’t point to any one thing that leads to early-season success but no title at the end of the year. It’s just the way it goes, usually, and it’s a reminder to never get too excited or call the dawn of a new era too soon. We’ve been there before. So with Sexton and Roczen way ahead at round one (and the Lawrence brothers equaling it with a 1-2 in both 250 motos) things are certainly looking good for the Red Riders right now. Will we finally look back at this opener as the one where it finally turned around for good? Or is it just more of the same? It all makes this second round this weekend at Hangtown very important. 

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Honda had a huge day at the opener. Can they keep it rolling?