Takaaki Nakagami embarked this Monday on the flight that will take him to Spain to take part in the last race of the 2022 MotoGP season, the Valencia Grand Prix which will take place this weekend. The Japanese crashed at Motorland Aragon on 18 September and despite being injured, he competed in the Japanese Grand Prix the following week. But he then had to stop for surgery twice in the last six weeks, losing three races: Thailand, Australia and Malaysia.
The Japanese from Honda crashed in the first laps of the Aragon Grand Prix after a contact with Marc Marquez and suffered a right hand injury. The next day the pilot was operated on in Barcelona and traveled to Tokyo in the afternoon of the same day.
Nakagami did not want to miss his home grand prix, after three years in which the world championship did not run in the land of the Rising Sun due to the pandemic. Over the weekend we saw him suffer a lot every time he had to put on or take off his glove. The injury did not improve, on the contrary, and his trusted doctors in Tokyo advised him to undergo surgery again to graft the skin on the torn area. The surgery was carried out on September 30th and he started a recovery process that prevented him from competing in the next three races.
The Chiba driver will have to undergo an exam on Thursday at the medical center of the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in Valencia to receive the ok, which is a mandatory process for having been declared cured by the doctors who operated on him.
“I’m going to Spain, I’ll be back for the last race in Valencia!”, Wrote the Japanese this morning on his social profiles, accompanying the text with a photo at Tokyo airport, where you can still see the bandaged finger.
In addition to competing in the last grand prix of the season, Nakagami wanted to travel to Valencia to be present at the tests on Tuesday next week. It is a single day of testing of the pre-season 2023 in which Honda will bring the evolution of the prototype of the 2023 RC213V that both Marc Marquez, both Nakagami himself and Stefan Bradl were able to test in its initial phase during the tests officers in Misano at the beginning of September.
After his continuity as an LCR-Honda team rider was questioned for much of the season, Nakagami was eventually able to renew for another year with the Japanese manufacturer and will remain in the premier class for a sixth season.
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