Results say it all. Honda made big steps in 2025. From the bottom of the Constructors Championship in 2024 to… well, only second from bottom. Above Yamaha. A series of ever-improving race finishes, including two podiums in the closing races for Joan Mir, represent a transformation. In 2024, only one of four riders managed to get into the top 10… Johann Zarco, with one eighth and one ninth place.
But it’s a big step. Because it has promoted Honda from Concession Category D to C.
The difference is more than just status.
The concession categories aim to help struggling constructors while hampering runaway winners. To make racing more equal. Updated twice yearly, they depend on points scored by a factory’s best finisher at each race. Score more than 85 percent of available points and you are Category A. Or, to put it another way, you are Ducati. Score less than 35 percent – Category D. Honda and Yamaha.
There’s nobody currently in Category B. Aprilia and KTM are C, with 35 to 66 percent.
Denizens of Category D get significantly the most concessions, which include extra aerodynamic updates. The most important concern testing and most crucially free engine development.
Testing concessions allow full-time riders to test as much as they like at any grand prix circuit… until they run out of tyres. Their allocation of 260 is significantly more than Ducati’s, whose full-time riders may run only at official tests.
The engines matter most. Honda and Yamaha are allowed two more than the others, but that’s not the important thing. For all the rest, development is frozen – engine spec set at the end of the pre-season tests. They’re stuck with it for the year.
This had a huge impact in 2025.
Ducati’s new power-up GP25 engine proved problematic in engine braking and corner entry. The architecture was different enough from the GP24 engine that it needed a different chassis. No time to fix that, so they couldn’t just go back to last year’s engine.
The GP25 proved highly erratic for both Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio. Results varied wildly. Bagnaia, for instance, scored a double win in Japan, and was effectively double last a week later in Indonesia. Only other-worldly Marc Marquez could regularly win on it.
Thanks to the concession system, Ducati were hostage to their previous success.
Now the other side of the coin: Honda.
The Big H turned the corner in the latter part of 2025. Zarco’s wet win at Le Mans – their first since Marquez in 2021 – was a freak of nature. But Mir’s recent podiums and Luca Marini’s top-10s were not. As Mir affirmed, Honda had found an effective development direction.
Thanks to the concessions. And, of course, hard work, focus and plenty of testing. Plus the help of ex-Aprilia tech boss Romano Albesiano.
They’re not yet winning races, so not well enough. But at the same time, also a bit too well.
Improving results (and especially Zarco’s max-points French win) changed their percentage score. Thirty-five percent of the maximum available, 814 points, is 284.9. Honda scored 285.
So, by one measly percentage point, Honda lost Category D status, and move up to join Aprilia and KTM in C.
Bang go the concessions that have helped Honda’s nascent recovery. They face season 2026 with less testing, less aero and a frozen engine.
Is this a bad thing? “No,” says team boss Alberto Puig. “It’s a reward for progress.”
The riders agree. “We don’t need a new engine now, just a few small things,” said Marini.
Well, that remains to be seen. Further progress isn’t guaranteed. Just look at Yamaha – languishing in Category D.
Then again, with a new V4 engine to develop, even if it is only for the last year of the 1000cc formula, Yamaha definitely need all the help they can get.
