Honda had competed in the premier class since 1966 under various factory-backed guises, including the Rothmans Honda team of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1995, Honda restructured its premier-class programme into a single entity aligned with Spanish oil company Repsol, creating what would become the sport's dominant force for the next three decades. The partnership gave the team its iconic orange, red and yellow livery, instantly recognisable across paddocks worldwide.
The newly branded squad launched with Mick Doohan, Àlex Crivillé and Shinichi Ito aboard the Honda NSR500. Doohan claimed his second consecutive World Championship in 1995 and proceeded to dominate the remainder of the decade. In 1997, Repsol Honda riders won all fifteen races on the calendar; Doohan alone won twelve of them, breaking Giacomo Agostini's record for victories in a single season on his way to a fourth championship. A serious crash at Jerez in 1999 ended Doohan's career mid-season, but Crivillé stepped up to claim his sole World Championship that year.
When the MotoGP era began in 2002, the team signed Valentino Rossi alongside Tohru Ukawa on the new Honda RC211V. Rossi dominated with eleven race wins to claim the championship. He retained the title in 2003 alongside rookie Nicky Hayden before departing for Yamaha, a move that left the team searching for a new figurehead.
Dani Pedrosa joined Nicky Hayden for 2006. Hayden endured a turbulent season, losing a significant points lead after a collision with Pedrosa in Portugal, yet held on to win the World Championship at the final round in Valencia. Pedrosa proved a consistent title contender throughout his Honda career without ever winning the championship outright, claiming runner-up finishes in 2007, 2010 and 2012. Casey Stoner joined for 2011 and delivered Honda the riders', constructors' and teams' championships in a dominant campaign, winning nine races. He announced his retirement from the sport in May 2012 at just twenty-seven years old.
Moto2 champion Marc Márquez replaced Stoner and immediately announced himself as an extraordinary talent. He took victory on just his second MotoGP start in Texas, becoming the youngest premier-class race winner of all time, and went on to claim the championship at the final round in Valencia, becoming the youngest premier-class champion ever. In 2014, Márquez won the first ten races of the season and thirteen in total, surpassing Doohan's record for victories in a single season. He secured six MotoGP titles with Honda between 2013 and 2019.
Jorge Lorenzo replaced Pedrosa for 2019 but struggled catastrophically, while Márquez won twelve races to take his sixth MotoGP crown with Honda. A serious humerus injury suffered at the first race in Jerez in 2020 kept Márquez out for the remainder of that season and plagued subsequent years with multiple surgeries and complications. The RC213V grew increasingly uncompetitive; by 2023, Márquez failed to finish any of the first nine rounds. He announced his departure from Honda in October 2023.
Luca Marini and Joan Mir occupied the factory seats in 2024, finishing twenty-first and twenty-second in the standings with a best race result of eleventh. Honda ended the season bottom of the constructors' table, their worst campaign since the 1980s. Repsol, their sponsor of thirty years, announced the end of their relationship in September 2024. Castrol became title sponsor for 2025, with the team competing as Honda HRC Castrol. Results improved modestly, with Mir taking two podiums in Japan and Malaysia.
Repsol Honda accumulated more premier-class world championships than any other team during their partnership's peak. The squad provided Honda with riders' titles under Doohan, Crivillé, Rossi, Hayden, Stoner and Márquez across three decades of competition, and their orange-liveried bikes became among the most recognisable in motorsport. The team's fall from dominance in the early 2020s represents one of the starkest reversals of fortune in modern MotoGP history.