THE OXLEY INTERVIEW: ALBERTO PUIG
From Motogp hard man to HRC manager.
If two-times Motogp world champion Casey Stoner says someone is hard as nails then they’re 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 500cc grand prix. Two months later his career was effectively over when he smashed his left leg in a 160mph crash at Le Mans. A dozen operations failed to fix the damage, so he had no option but to retire and find a new job.
That turned out to be coaching youngsters in Spain and 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’s 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. ‘Chas 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 don’t see this when looking in from the outside, especially these days when the racing seems so shiny, so glamorous and so fashioned for TV. Riders smile for the cameras and wave at the fans, but 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 that could (occasionally) hassle Mick Doohan. And like Doohan he makes no concessions to PR, because being polite to journalists doesn’t make you faster, does it? This is why his pit-lane interviews for TV can be awkward, even controversial affairs, because he doesn’t 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, “Fuck, this guy is old and he’s injured, but he tries so hard”. This is what I always tried to give them.’
‘Everything in Puig’s life is measured by one thing: will this make you a tenth faster’
Puig was a grand prix rider from 1988 to 1997, first riding 250s before moving to 500s. He scored his first 500cc 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. Then, at Le Mans in July he was battling for his first pole position when he crashed at the 160mph Turn One. He hit the air-fence so hard he went underneath it, shattering his left tibia and fibula against the trackside wall. Le Mans remained off the Motogp calendar for the next few years while they improved safety at the corner that dealt Puig such a blow.
‘The injury was a disaster – everything in the leg was destroyed,’ says 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 that also 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 that 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’ve lost the buzz they live for. Puig had all that but he never let anyone know.
‘Of course I was frustrated but my natural character doesn’t allow me to show how I’m feeling. 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, which they had created to nurture young talent.
This required a total mind reset, because when you’re racing it’s all about you but when you’re teaching others it’s 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. ‘I thought this was my chance to work 24/7 with a rider to get the maximum from him. We won one 125cc world title, two 250cc world titles and then we moved into Motogp with Repsol Honda. But Pedrosa clearly had a handicap when it came to racing big bikes [he stands five feet two inches tall), so he created a system so 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-successful-rider-never-to-wear-thecrown 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 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 [He 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.’
Six-times Motogp king Marquez hasn’t raced since he broke his right arm in last year’s season-opening Spanish GP. Three operations later – including a bone graft, taken not from a cow but from his own pelvis – and he still doesn’t know when he will be strong enough to ride a Motogp bike again. Inevitably there are rumours floating around that his career is already over – that Jerez 2020 was his Le Mans 1995. Despite his own experience Puig is convinced Marquez will race again and he believes that the injury and the 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.’
The 2021 Motogp season is scheduled to start in Qatar, 28 March, with or without Marquez. And for the fourth year in a row the Spaniard will have a different team-mate: Pedrosa in 2018, Lorenzo in 2019, younger brother Alex in 2020 and this year Pol Espargaro, who vacated the factory KTM team to pursue his childhood dream of riding for Repsol Honda. Puig hopes that in Espargaro he has finally found a team-mate for Marquez who can also race for victories, especially after Lorenzo’s disastrous year with the team, when the three-times Motogp champion never even made it into the top ten, let alone onto the podium.
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 inline-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.
Motogp is ballet in a war zone… Riders smile for the cameras but inside they are plotting murder’