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Ken Kawauchi Interview: HRC's Technical Manager On Bringing Honda Back To Being Competitive

By Akira Nishimura |

At the beginning of 2023, former Suzuki technical manager Ken Kawauchi moved to Honda. This news surprised many people around the world, because it is very unusual for Japanese company workers who are in a responsible position to move to their competitors.

In 2023, Honda went through the toughest season in their MotoGP history. The result of that painful year was that they qualified for concessions as a manufacturer for the forthcoming 2024 season, so they joined the shakedown test before the official three-day test at the Sepang International Circuit. After this shakedown test, we spoke with Ken-san for a one-on-one interview to ask about Honda's struggle in the previous year and their expectations for 2024.

Q: How would you describe your first season in HRC?

KK: Although I moved from one Japanese company to another Japanese one, everything was different, including colleagues, the way of working, the working environment and scale, everything. While I had to learn a lot of things, we could not achieve good results, so honestly speaking, it was a very tough season for me.

Q: From your point of view as a technical manager who is in charge of managing the on-site technical things, what was the reason for this struggle?

KK: I think there was no simple answer for it. One of the reasons was, for sure, our bike was not as competitive as our rival manufacturers. Maybe we could have done things with a better approach. It was the combination of many things that caused those results.

Q: When I spoke with [Tetsuhiro] Kuwata-san (HRC General Manager Race Operations Management Division) and [Shin] Sato-san (HRC Technical Director) in January, they said the problem was that the very narrow sweet spot they had in the 2022 season’s bike did not have much room for improvement, and it was still an issue for them also in the 2023 season. How is your view of that?

KK: Well…, I think we could manage a rather decent race in India (Marc Marquez 3rd in Sprint, Joan Mir 5th in the race), and Alex (Rins) won the race in Austin. So, in those racetracks, our bike’s sweet spot worked not so badly. However, we struggled at most tracks, so I understand the narrow sweet spot was still an issue for us to solve also in the 2023 season.

Q: Kuwata-san said that they had to optimize each small area due to the small sweet spot, which hampered them in reviewing the total balance of the bike.

KK: We tried very hard with what we could do in the racetracks. But from last year, the format change of the race weekend made it difficult to try a big changes during the weekend.

Now we have a Sprint race on Saturday afternoon, so we have to try a time attack on Friday afternoon. And on the morning of Friday, the track conditions are not ideal for evaluating things.

We cannot always use our preferred front tires because the number of tires is limited. We have to deal with our non-preferred tires. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to use the preferred ones in the later session.

Honda
Joan Mir
Johann Zarco
Luca Marini
Takaaki Nakagami
MotoGP
CormacGP
David Emmett
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Comments

Rear grip. They never really got away from the Bridgestone front end focused design until now. I know everyone hates aero and is in a competition to see who can be the most vitriolic about it but until it's gone I hope HRC leverages Honda's avionic division. They literally make a jet so I imagine there's a little aerodynamic expertise.

I don't doubt there is something to be gained from any division that has aero experience. But planes that go nearly 500 mph don't have the most carry-over to bikes that average less than 200. KTM has the strongest help from their Red Bull/F1 ties and even those guys said it's such a different game, even just for lean angles. Judging by previous reporting on subpar communication between the race engineers and the factory, you have to wonder what inter-department comms look like for Honda. 

Obviously I know nothing of Honda and Japanese work practices, but I am reminded of a conversation I had some years ago with an importer and wholesaler of textiles, including sailcloth, here in New Zealand. He told me that when they dealt with the Japanese manufacturer of the sailcloth, the factory would ask for the specifications they required, and then create it from scratch. He said there seemed to be no consideration of looking at what they already produced to see if it would meet the customer's requirements. Perhaps the insularity between departments is deep elsewhere, like it's a cultural thing.

Great guy but entire interview sounds like guy afraid to speak his mind for fear to upsetting either Puig or Honda. Sounds like it was written by a speech writer to say as little as possible. He deserves better.