Alberto Puig to step back from Honda MotoGP Team Manager role

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Alberto Puig handed wider HRC advisory role from 2027

Alberto Puig will move out of his long-held role as Honda’s factory MotoGP Team Manager at the end of the 2026 season, with Honda Racing Corporation confirming the Spaniard will take on a broader advisory position from 2027. Honda says Puig will continue to support HRC management, staff and riders across its two-wheeled racing activities, including MotoGP, WorldSBK and youth development programs.

The move marks a significant reshuffle inside Honda’s racing structure. Puig has been the public face of Honda’s factory MotoGP garage since taking over the Team Manager role in 2018, a period that began with immediate success but later became one of the most difficult chapters in HRC’s modern premier-class history.

Puig arrived in the role with an enormous depth of racing experience. A former Grand Prix rider, race winner, talent scout, rider manager and long-time Honda man, he brought a direct, sometimes blunt, racer’s perspective to the position. Under his watch, Honda claimed back-to-back Triple Crowns in 2018 and 2019, securing the riders’, teams’ and constructors’ titles in consecutive seasons during the final phase of Marc Marquez’s dominant Honda era.

Since then, however, Honda’s MotoGP program has been forced into a prolonged rebuild. Marquez’s 2020 injury exposed the RC213V’s increasingly narrow operating window, and Honda spent several seasons trying to make the bike more usable across a broader range of riders. The company’s recent MotoGP work has shown signs of direction, but the brand is still attempting to return to the level expected of the most successful manufacturer in premier-class history.

The wording of Honda’s announcement suggests Puig is not simply being moved aside, but rather repositioned into a role with a wider brief. HRC says the 59-year-old will help assess the “overall picture” of Honda’s two-wheeled racing activities, support management staff and riders, and continue to shape Honda’s youth development pathways.

That wider scope is significant. While MotoGP will remain the most visible part of Honda’s racing program, HRC’s WorldSBK effort is also badly in need of sustained traction. Honda returned to WorldSBK as a factory operation in 2020 with the CBR1000RR-R Fireblade and considerable expectation, but the results have rarely matched the scale of the project. WorldSBK’s own recent analysis described Honda’s struggles in the category as an ongoing theme of the current era, despite the initial optimism around HRC’s return to the championship.

That makes Puig’s new role potentially more interesting than a simple advisory title might suggest. If HRC uses him as a cross-program troubleshooter, his experience could be applied not only to the MotoGP rebuild but also to the WorldSBK project, where Honda has long been rumoured to operate with one of the stronger budgets in the paddock yet has struggled to convert that investment into consistent podiums, wins or championship momentum.

For Honda, the challenge is not only financial or technical. It is also structural. MotoGP and WorldSBK demand different machinery, different rider profiles, and different development rhythms, but both require a clear chain of feedback from the rider to the garage to Japan. Puig’s strength has always been his capacity to read riders and situations plainly, even if his communication style has sometimes divided opinion. An advisory role could allow Honda to use that experience without requiring him to remain embedded in the daily operational pressure of a single MotoGP garage.

Puig framed the move as a natural progression after almost four decades in the world championship paddock.

“I first stepped into the World Championship paddock in 1987 and since then I have been a racer, worked with young riders, a rider manager and a team manager – always with Honda,” Puig said.

“During this time, I have experienced many moments, positive and negative, all of which have given me valuable knowledge on how to work with riders, people and different situations.

“It’s been a life of leading from the front and now I feel my skills are best suited to look at the overall picture. I am looking forward to using my experience in this new opportunity to help Honda HRC, its riders and its staff to grow and face all the challenges and successes which racing presents.”

Honda has not yet officially announced who will replace Puig as Team Manager of its factory MotoGP squad; however, Davide Brivio has been widely tipped to leave Trackhouse Racing to take up the HRC Team Manager role in 2027. That appointment will be closely watched, as it will coincide with MotoGP’s incoming technical regulations and a crucial phase in Honda’s attempt to reassert itself at the front of the premier class.

For Puig, the new title may sound less visible than the one he has held since 2018, but its actual influence could prove broader. Honda’s problems are no longer confined to a single garage, a single rider or a single championship. If HRC is serious about rebuilding its two-wheeled racing strength across the board, Puig’s next job may be less about running one team and more about helping Honda reconnect the many parts of a racing empire that has not been firing on all cylinders for too long.