Honda are asking the impossible from Marc Márquez - for him to control himself. The Spaniard getting injured while dirt-track riding last Saturday has clearly not gone down well with the high command of the Gold Wing outfit. They want him to change his attitude when it comes to preparing for races. "I haven't spoken to him, but I am going to. Training is one thing and races are another", said Shuhei Nakamoto, the Honda vice-president, in what might be interpreted as a light rap on the knuckles for Márquez hurting himself for the second time in as many years away from the MotoGP track. The head of the Repsol

Honda team learned of the rider's injury by email. Márquez's manager, Emilio Alzamora, rang team manager Livio Suppo, who in turn called Nakamoto. But it was Saturday night in Japan, and so he sent him the news via email. "Better anyway, as that way I had a quiet weekend", the Japanese executive joked.

But despite these protests, Nakamato's words will fall on deaf ears. Márquez will go on doing dirt-track riding and motocross as he has done up to now. It is his way of preparing for big races and the thing that most helps him to hone his technique. In any case, he does not know how to ride in any way which does not involve going fast, even when practising at home.

What most bothers Honda is that their second-string rider, Dani Pedrosa, is out of the title race and their first man is 30 points behind Valentino Rossi. But Honda are staying calm and have faith in both their men.

Someone else who was rapped on the knuckles was Australia's Jack Miller in Argentina. In the lead-up, at Jujuy, he was involved in a publicity stunt in which he rode a Honda on salt flats. It was a CBR with some elements of a MotoGP bike. There was not enough grip and he fell and ruined the bike. The members of the LCR team read him the riot act and asked him to take his work more seriously and to stop going back to visit his old Moto3 team, which is run by KTM. He obviously took this to heart as he fought hard on the Termas circuit and finished first among the Open class runners.