2023’s end looms large as just three more Grands Prix are left on the longest MotoGP season to date, the Repsol Honda Team ready to work until the end.
Round 18 begins the final push of the 2023, one last triple header to conclude an intense year. The familiar Sepang International Circuit will kick off this last stint, its 5.54 kilometers familiar to the entirety of the grid after multiple years of pre-season testing at the venue. This offers not only a chance to work from the setup found at the test, but also to clearly benchmark the changes and progress since February.
Marc Marquez lands in Malaysia off the back of progressive weekends, scoring a steady run of points since Misano. Following this trend of putting together consistent weekends and pushing when rewards are at their greatest will again be Marquez’s modus operandi for the Malaysian GP weekend. The #93 has twice taken premier class victory in Sepang and has finished on the podium an additional two times.
On the other side of the Repsol Honda Team garage, Joan Mir arrives in Sepang with ambitions of continuing his upward trajectory. Each round of the most recent flyaways has seen Mir’s confidence and feeling with the Honda RC213V grow over race distance, the 2020 MotoGP World Champion regularly showing the same pace as the top five during the race. Qualifying remains the big area to work on for #36, a higher grid position will allow him to keep out of early trouble.
The 10-lap Sprint race is scheduled to start at 15:00 Local Time on Saturday, November 11 with the full-length 20-lap Grand Prix set for 15:00 on Sunday, November 12.