‘With MotoGP I think ‘Same sh*t, different weekend’’
until I got on the bike. I wasn’t in a position to think: ‘I’m a champion, I’m a f***ing millionaire and I can do what I want.’ I couldn’t miss the first two rounds. I’m not going to win the BSB title like that. I didn’t have a choice.
How key is it that you have your BSB title-winning crew chief Giovanni Crupi with you in 2020?
That was my biggest ask – to bring Giovanni, a guy I really connect with. He tells me stuff a lot of crew chiefs wouldn’t. I might say: ‘I’m going to lose weight.’ And he’ll say: ‘No, don’t! Be you.’ Maybe he sees something that works that even I don’t see about myself. When I’ve been hot-headed, Giovanni grabs me and says, ‘Don’t do that!’ He’s like a dad to me. It was a massive deal for me to get him here in WSB. A lot of crew chiefs work on numbers. They’re not my sort of guy. Numbers can tell you everything is f***ing perfect but numbers won’t ride the bike or represent people’s feelings. Sometimes I’ll think: ‘We need two mill of preload’ and Giovanni says, ‘Maybe you need two mill of preload’. We’re on exactly the same wavelength.
Everyone smiles in racing, but do riders really get on?
I get on with all the guys, but only people I need to get along with. Riders generally respect one another if they have the same feeling. Marc Marquez and I grew up together. We had hate for each other, then we had friendship. It’s a pecking order in life. We came up from the Spanish championship, both finished on the podium at Donington in 2008, then were rivals in Moto2 – that’s when the friction started. In MotoGP, when you realise a guy’s career is going in a much faster way than yours, you have to accept it. That’s the problem with Valentino and Marc: Valentino doesn’t want to accept that Marc is the better rider now. When you’ve been on top for that long it’s hard to see some young gun come through.
Do you think today’s young riders come with too much attitude?
That’s how they get brought up. They’re fed with a silver spoon. They can’t do anything wrong. It’s always you and never them. I got told the opposite when I was a kid: I had a sh*t bike but was told it could win. Whether it could or not, I believed it and I always will. This is why I suffered so much at Aprilia in MotoGP: I kept fighting with myself to get results but they weren’t coming. I couldn’t break that from my head.
Do you still watch MotoGP?
I never watched racing until I was about 13. It was when I was in the Spanish championship, so I’d watch religiously to understand what they were doing to make them better. Now I’d rather watch boxing than MotoGP because I have a passion for boxing. With MotoGP, after four laps I. think: ‘Same sh*t, different weekend’. I’d rather do something productive. Last year I was watching more WSB because I needed to understand what Johnny is doing, what Chaz is doing. I have seen some things that can help, which I’ll tell you at the end of the year!
How badly do you want to win WSB?
When Bautista didn’t win I was p*ssed off for Ducati. I thought, ‘F***! You had two hands on it.’ But he had soap on his hands. Ducati isn’t a Japanese manufacturer. When you go to the factory, it’s the people, the energy. I speak to people who have Ducatis and the passion is through the roof. You don’t get that with GSX-R or ZX-10 riders. There is something about the Ducati, it must be passion. If I win the title with Ducati everyone at Ducati has won. It would mean more to win it for Ducati than to win it for myself.