Repsol Honda team manager Alberto Puig has given insight into the reasoning behind its decision to sign Alex Marquez for the 2020 MotoGP World Championship season, playing the down the fact he is a ‘Marquez’.
The 2019 Moto2 champion assumes the seat vacated by the retired Jorge Lorenzo for 2020, where he will be paired by his six-time MotoGP World Championship winning brother Marc Marquez.
Creating an unprecedented situation of having brothers in the same team, Puig says Marquez ‘Jnr’ deserves his seat based on his Moto2 title win alone.
"Basically, we have to understand that the decision has been taken out of Alex's results,” he told Crash.net. “This is the priority. I mean, he is the world champion of Moto2 and this is something that is the starting point of the consideration to sign him.
"It's also true that in Honda we are trying to find riders for the future, young generation riders, and out of the circumstances that Jorge decided to stop, it was one-year that was almost 'lost'.”
"So we decided to give him this opportunity, based on the fact that he's the new Moto2 world champion, that he is young and we believe it can be a good opportunity for him. We believe if you don’t consider his name, I think that any rider that wins a world title deserves to have this type of opportunity. The only [unusual] factor here is the surname."
Moreover, Puig insists Marc’s views were not a factor in its decision, revealing he ‘didn’t interfere’ when it came to making the call.
"I can tell you that Marc did not interfere at all. Of course, if you ask, are you happy if your brother races in this team? You would say yes. It's normal. But I think the conversation was not with Marc, the conversation was with Alex and with his manager, Emilio [Alzamora]."
Alex Marquez will test the 2020 Honda RC213V at the annual post-season MotoGP at Valencia this week for the first time alongside Marc.
Un sueño hecho realidad! Gracias @hrc_motogp por esta gran oportunidad!
A dream come true! Thanks @hrc_motogp for this great opportunity!#AM73 #MotoGP pic.twitter.com/ig9T1aTy9g— Alex Márquez (@alexmarquez73) November 19, 2019
2020 Repsol Honda rider Alex Marquez will be in black livery at today's Valencia test.
#ValenciaGP #MotoGP pic.twitter.com/UV3oe7edpm
— CRASH.NET/MotoGP (@crash_motogp) November 19, 2019
