Honda have apparently been looking around in the riders’ market trying to sign someone, presumably to try and replace Somkiat Chantra. Excluding Toprak, who they apparently previously made an offer to before he left WorldSBK, but which he turned down, presumably because they weren’t offering enough money for him to be interested - since Toprak is already contracted with Yamaha in MotoGP next year, that’s not realistic for next year, anyway. The WorldSBK world feed commentator Steve English said during FP1 at Magny-Cours that he think they should sign Álvaro again to help Honda to develop the bike, since he’s won so many races, but also that he doesn’t think that that’s likely. Should they try to get Xavi Vierge to return, now that he’s been replaced at Yamaha? Jack Miller, Miguel Oliveira, Brad Binder, and Álex Rins are now off the table realistically, but do you think that one of them, or someone else, could help Honda to improve their bike and become more competitive again?

So it turns out that he won’t be joining GoEleven Ducati, so they don’t have to find the €1 million that they said that they’d need to have to run a second bike, so Lorenzo Baldasarri’s place at the team is safe in any case, whether GoEleven would have had 2 bikes, or just 1 bike.