After he crosses the finish line in Barcelona at the final round of the 2024 MotoGP season on 17 November, Takaaki Nakagami will start a new chapter in his life as a Honda test rider.
It’s a role that will take him back to his home country of Japan, a seismic shift for him after spending the best part of 10 years living in Europe.
Out of those 10, seven were spent racing in MotoGP with the LCR Honda team. He will leave the premier class with the sting of not having finished on the podium, despite coming close on a few occasions during his breakthrough 2020 campaign.
Nakagami had previously scored 14 podiums in six seasons in Moto2, including two wins, which earned him a move up to the premier class with Honda’s satellite squad, LCR. Nakagami was inducted into the Idemitsu side of the operation in 2018 to meet the Asian quota set by the lubricants company.
In 2025, it will be Thai racer Somkiat Chantra who will take over the place currently occupied by Nakagami, who took the decision to step down from MotoGP a few months ago. However, he maintains his relationship with Honda, which will keep him a test rider based in Japan.
Takaaki Nakagami, Team LCR Honda
Photo by: Asif Zubairi
This move is part of the shake-up that Honda instigated by Honda to accelerate the optimisation of its RC213V, a bike whose performance has been in a free fall for some time. The arrival of Romano Albesiano as the new technical director, plus three-time grand prix winner Aleix Espargaro into the testing division in Europe, is all part of the same overhaul. Nakagami will add another gear in the development of the parts that are tested in Japan, a task that was until now in the hands of Tetsuta Nagashima.
In next week’s finale, Nakagami will say goodbye to what can be considered more of his home track than Motegi. The Japanese rider, after all, has been living in Sant Cugat del Valles on the outskirts of Barcelona for almost a decade.
After the final stop on the calendar, and official test the following Tuesday, in which his job will be to tutor Chantra, he will pack his bags and return to his home in Chiba, a city located 40 kilometres to the east of Tokyo. There, his life will suddenly go down two gears, at least as far as travel is concerned, although he still does not know what his day-to-day routine would look like.
“We have not yet spoken with Honda. We will do so at the beginning of December, when I will go to the HRC headquarters. There they will explain to me the plan they have planned for me, for the next six months,” Nakagami told Motorsport.com / Autosport.
“I don’t know yet how many days of testing I will do, or where, or how many wild cards they want me to do.
“Honda wants to accelerate the development of the bike in Japan. There is Nagashima, but he is not fast enough to evaluate the parts beyond their functionality. The idea is to shorten the time in the evaluation of the novelties, and I am faster than him. My times will not be five seconds off the grand prix riders.”
After 17 full seasons in the world championship, including the lower classes, Nakagami is aware that the demands of being a rider will not be the same from next year.
Takaaki Nakagami, LCR Honda
Photo by: Asif Zubairi
That doesn’t mean that he can abandon his preparation, although his new routine will have nothing to do with the one he had until now in Barcelona, where he trained six days a week and combined sessions in the gym with flat track training.
“My rhythm and lifestyle will change completely. For the last 10 years, I have been living in Spain, and now I will move back to Japan,” he said.
“The first thing I will have to do is adapt to the new context, to the new weather, and then see what is the best way to keep fit and familiar with speed.
“The good thing is that Honda is always there, so I will be able to use the bikes they let me use, or use their circuits.”