Alberto Puig

Alberto Puig is Marc Marquez’s team manager. The tough, uncompromising Spaniard tells us how he makes great riders and how his own MotoGP dreams were shattered by a horrible injury

A chat with Marc Marquez’s team manager

IF TWO-TIME MOTOGP world champion Casey Stoner says someone is hard as nails, then they are hard as nails. And Stoner says Alberto Puig is hard as nails. In May 1995, Puig became the second Spaniard in history to win a 500-cc Grand Prix. Two months later, his career was effectively over when he smashed his left leg to smithereens in a 160-mph (257km/h) crash at Le Mans. A dozen operations failed to fix the damage, so he had no option but to retire and find a job on the less exciting side of the pit wall.

Puig’s big thing after that was coaching youngsters, first in Spain and later in the Far East. He played a pivotal role in the careers of many superstars, most famously Stoner, Dani Pedrosa, and Chaz Davies. These days he is team manager at Repsol Honda, the official HRC factory team.

Stoner writes plenty about Puig in his autobiography, Pushing the Limits. He calls him ‘tough and uncompromising’ and ‘stern and abrupt’ but also remembers the Puig family for their generosity when he was at the bottom of the ladder, trying to make his way into Grands Prix. The book’s key Puig story is a Davies memory from the 2001 Movistar Honda talent-spotting championship.

‘We were all in awe of Alberto Puig,’ wrote Stoner. ‘Chaz remembers how tough Alberto was: “Not to deal with or talk to, but the conversation began and ended with what was going on at the track and he runs a strict program there. In the second round at Albacete, Camier got a bad start, ‘What happened?’ Alberto asked him, so Leon said, ‘Somebody in front of me bogged it off the line and I had to back off and I lost loads of ground…’ Alberto looked at him and said, ‘You must hit him!’ So, it was like, okay, we’re here for the racing, whatever it takes…”

MotoGP is ballet in a war zone. Many fans do not see this when looking in from the outside, especially these days when the racing seems so shiny, so glamorous, and so fashioned for the television. Riders smile for the cameras and wave at the fans, but deep inside they are plotting murder.

Metaphorically, at least. ‘During the race, you want to kill the other riders,’ said Marco Simoncelli a few weeks before he lost his life in October 2011.

Puig is old-school. He comes from the 1980s and 1990s, when he was one of the few men who could (occasionally) hassle Mick Doohan. And like Doohan, he makes no concessions to PR, because being polite to journalists does not make you faster, does it? This is why his pit-lane interviews for television can be awkward, even controversial affairs, because he does not play the media game. Everything in Puig’s life is measured by one simple judgement: will this make you a tenth of a second faster or won’t it?

His focus when coaching riders is to turn them into battle-hardened warriors, with a merciless attitude to themselves and to everyone else, because this is what it takes to fight your way to the top in motorcycle racing. Sometimes there is something almost military in Puig’s delivery. ‘Motorcycle racing is a brutal sport,’ says the 54-year-old from Barcelona. ‘When I was helping young guys like Pedrosa and Stoner, I always told them they had to be fighters. And I always told them that nothing ever happens out of nothing; so, if you

want something, you must keep this in mind.

‘I also told them that when you come into the MotoGP paddock, don’t expect anything from anyone. You must fight for it and take it; this is the principle of the fighting spirit…’

As he says these words, he thumps the table three times with his fist to emphasise the point.

‘… If you want to be a top rider, you must be like this all the time. Not just when you are at the track, but also at home. All the time you must have a mind like the guy who is working in the factory from six in the morning. You must also be selfish, because you cannot imagine the level of selfishness of the top riders. This is what it takes…’

He thumps the table again.

‘What I tried to give these young guys was the seriousness, the passion and the consistency. And not only by blah, blah, blah, but also by action. So, I went training with them, because for the kids to respect you, they need to say, “Wow, this guy is old and he’s injured, but he tries so hard”. This is what I always tried to give them.’

Puig was a Grand Prix rider from 1988 to 1997, first in 250s, then in 500s. He scored his first 500-cc top-three at Hockenheim in June 1994, when he shared the podium with Doohan and Kevin Schwantz.

The following May, he became a gold-plated Spanish MotoGP superstar when he won the Spanish GP at Jerez. At Le Mans in July, he was battling for his first pole position when he crashed at the 160-mph (257-km/h) Turn One. He hit the air-fence so hard he went underneath, shattering his left tibia and fibula against the trackside wall. Le Mans remained out of MotoGP for the next few years while they improved safety at the corner.

‘The injury was a disaster — everything in the leg was destroyed,’ recalls Puig. ‘The nerves were cut, the ankle and all the toes are fused, I lost all the muscle and then the bone got infected. For three years it was like that — I was taking one and a half grams of antibiotics every day and then they fitted an external fixator. Finally, they removed the bone and gave me a graft, from an animal.’

What kind of animal, I ask?

‘A cow! My leg is cow, it’s crazy! I had 12 surgeries and, finally, I understood that I couldn’t be competitive anymore because now the leg only works as a stick.

‘Later on, I realised also that I had got some fear from the injury. I was no longer capable of racing from a physical point of view, but also from a psychological point of view. It may sound strange, but to be a rider, you sometimes need to be an idiot. You just have to race the bike and if you think too much, you delay all the processes and the lap-time never comes. I love racing but I had to move on.’

Most racers who are forced to retire through injury spend their first few years on the sidelines, burning up inside, like drug addicts doing cold turkey, because they have lost the buzz they live for. Puig had all that but he never let anyone know.

‘Of course, I was very frustrated but my natural character doesn’t allow me to show how I am feeling inside. Anyway, I decided to move on but always thinking I should try to stay in the racing environment. I had been racing since I was seven, so I had to try and do something with all that knowledge.’

MotoGP rights-holders Dorna put Puig in charge of the Movistar series that they had created to nurture young talent.

This required a total reset of his mindset, because when you are racing, it is all is about you, but when you are teaching others, it is all about them.

‘I had to completely change my character. Those kids knew nothing, so instead of keeping everything I knew for myself, I gave it to them. Doing that gives you the chance to forget about yourself and you still get a lot of reward when you see these guys win.’

The first kid to really impress Puig was a tiny 13-year-old by the name of Dani Pedrosa.

‘THE INJURY WAS A DISASTER — EVERYTHING IN THE LEG WAS DESTROYED. THE NERVES WERE CUT, THE ANKLE AND ALL THE TOES ARE FUSED, I LOST ALL THE MUSCLE, AND THEN THE BONE GOT INFECTED’

‘I thought this was my chance to work 24/7 with a rider to get the maximum from him. We won one 125-cc world title, two 250-cc world titles, and then we moved into MotoGP with Repsol Honda. But Pedrosa clearly had a handicap to ride big bikes [he stands five feet two inches tall), so he created a system by which he could feel much more from the bike. If you have some disadvantage, in racing or in life, then you try to compensate by doing something different, somewhere else.’

Pedrosa won 31 MotoGP races but never won the title, so he inherited the most-successfulrider-never-to-wear-the-crown prize from 1980s legend Randy Mamola.

In 2018, Puig was offered the job of team manager at Repsol Honda, which at that time had Pedrosa and Marc Marquez on their bikes.

‘I accepted the job because I understood I could do it. I know this world and I have a big network of people because I’ve been here all my life. My approach has always been…’

Once again, he thumps the table.

‘… To be serious, to talk to people, and, as a team manager, to try to be selfish for your team. Whatever is good for the team I try to get for the team. I think this is a principle you must have.’

Like everyone else in the paddock, Puig is agog at the skills of six-time MotoGP king Marquez. And no one has ever seen Puig agog at anything else.

‘I’ve been super-lucky to work with many super-talented guys — Dani, Casey, Jorge [Lorenzo], and Marc. All champions are special but this guy (chuckles) is something else.

‘With Marc, everything is on another planet. Obviously, from a racing point of view the guy is an animal. When he puts on his helmet and goes out on track, you know something is going to happen, something special. And you know when you’re talking to him that he’s not playing about, but he is really, really easy to work with, because he’s never become like a superstar.

‘Apart from his ability to ride a bike, he’s also a clever guy. This is important. He wants to have a team like a family and he knows how to create an ambience in his team. Ask any of his crew and they’d do anything for him.’

Marquez missed the 2020 season after breaking his right arm at the first race. Three operations later — including a bone graft, taken

‘I’VE BEEN SUPER-LUCKY TO WORK WITH MANY SUPERTALENTED GUYS — DANI, CASEY, JORGE [LORENZO], AND MARC’

not from a cow but from his own pelvis — he is on his way back, despite rumours that Jerez 2020 was his Le Mans 1995.

Despite his own experience, Puig is onvinced Marquez’s injury and long absence from racing will make him stronger, not weaker.

‘I think his mentality will be the same because this guy doesn’t change his mentality. He will have more experience from what has happened and I’m sure that he will grow stronger out of this.’

For the fourth year in a row, Marquez will have a different teammate: Pedrosa in 2018, Lorenzo in 2019, younger brother Alex in 2020, and this year Pol Espargaro, who quit the factory KTM team to pursue his childhood dream of riding for Repsol Honda.

Puig hopes that in Espargaro he has finally found a teammate for Marquez who can race for victories, especially after Lorenzo’s disastrous year with the team, when the threetime MotoGP champion never even made it into the top 10.

Crucially, Honda’s RC213V and KTM’s RC16 are both 90-degree V4s, which means they have similar dynamics, so Espargaro should have a better chance than Lorenzo, who was befuddled by the RC213V after years of riding Yamaha’s easy-going in-line four YZR-M1.

Last year Honda failed to win a MotoGP race for the first time since 1981, when they raced their oval-piston NR500 four-strokes against the dominant two-strokes. The company cannot afford another season like that, so more than ever, the pressure will be on Puig to produce. There may be some banging on tables…