PUIG SAYS HONDA NEVER MADE A SERIOUS BID TO BRING MARQUEZ BACK

Alberto Puig says Marc Marquez was right to extend his Ducati deal rather than return to Honda for 2027, despite the emotional pull of a reunion. Honda reportedly spoke with Marquez at the Valencia season finale about a possible comeback, but Puig, who is leaving his role at the end of the season, said the discussions never amounted to a serious attempt to bring him back.

Marquez’s Ducati renewal was confirmed in June and was reportedly agreed over the winter, following his dominant 2025 championship campaign. Honda is preparing a new line-up, with Fabio Quartararo set to arrive from Yamaha and Diogo Moreira expected to step up from LCR.

Asked whether he would have liked to see Marquez back in Honda colours, Puig acknowledged what they had achieved together. The Spaniard won six world titles with the manufacturer. “Everyone would like to work again with someone with whom they’ve achieved so much,” Puig said, adding that he and Marquez remain friends and that he wants what is best for him.

But Puig believes a return would mean looking backwards. “You shouldn’t try to go back to the place where you were happy,” he said. Marquez, he noted, is now with “a great team and a great bike”. Puig said he would have welcomed a reunion, but Honda “never did more than necessary to try and revive something that’s already in the past”. He added: “In life, you can’t move forward by looking back.”

Puig also reflected on the circumstances that brought Marquez’s Honda years to a difficult close. The rider broke his arm in 2020 and missed almost the entire season, then sat out 17 races between 2021 and 2023. At the end of that period, he and Honda agreed to end his contract a year early.

The injury coincided with the COVID pandemic and a technical decline at Honda, Puig said, creating a damaging combination. “We won a lot of races for many years, and then we stopped winning,” he recalled. With the team’s leading rider injured and the bike struggling, results dried up. Other riders, including Alex Marquez, Stefan Bradl and Pol Espargaro, could not reproduce the same heights.

Puig described the period as especially difficult for Marquez, who was hampered by both his physical condition and a motorcycle that was “not up to par”. Honda has since acknowledged why Marquez chose to leave. Quartararo has said the manufacturer now understands the reasons for his departure and has adopted a more aggressive approach, with the aim of returning to the front in the next rules cycle.