The story of LCR 25 years on from their humble beginnings
LCR have been taking it to the MotoGP big guns while also developing the finest talent for a quarter of a century
‘It was just me, two mechanics and a van which I’d borrowed’
Owning your own race team is dream for many. To actually do that in MotoGP and turn it into a financially stable, competitive and respected entity is on another level entirely.
Lucio Cecchinello has achieved this, and 2021 marks the Lucio Cecchinello Racing (LCR) team’s 25th Anniversary in the Grand Prix paddock.
From a three-man 125cc squad in 1996 to multi-time MotoGP race winners in 2021, the team have tasted success at each level of GP racing. At the time of writing LCR have a total of 24 victories, 84 podiums and 27 poles, with 55 crew members. And in terms of riders it’s fair to say they’ve played a part in the career of some of the very best: Casey Stoner, Cal Crutchlow, Jack Miller and a host of other stars have all raced for Cecchinello.
It’s a remarkable achievement and quite the story to tell: the underdogs successfully overcoming the odds. MCN sat down with the man himself to discuss the last 25 years.
By today’s standards, Cecchinello the racer was a late arrival. His parents insisted that he completed high school first and paid his way at home.
He was 19 when he entered the Italian Championship in 1989, and 23 when he first joined the 125cc World Championship. Cecchinello raced, and won the title, in the European Championship in 1995 before seeking a return to the World Championship. The problem was that teams wanted younger riders, so Cecchinello took things into his own hands and created his own team at the age of 26. “I invested all of the money that I’d put aside from a couple of years of my career,” he explains to MCN. “It wasn’t much. I didn’t even have the money to buy a vehicle, so I borrowed it from one of my mechanics. Our very first team name was Honda Team GP3 because it was me and two mechanics, Paulo Cordioli and Marco Seda, and our small van.”
Cecchinello scored multiple 125cc top 10s in 1996 and 1997 before recruiting two-time runner-up Noboru Ueda to race alongside him in 1998. Instant success followed. Ueda secured the team’s maiden pole at the season opener in Japan, before clinching LCR’s first victory at the Johor Circuit in Malaysia two weeks later. The celebrations would go up another level that year when Cecchinello himself won the Madrid Grand Prix.
“I was so proud and was emotional as I got the chequered flag. I remember that I had goosebumps all over my spine, thinking ‘wow that’s incredible, I’ve done it!’
“It was a realisation of a dream, especially considering that plenty of people had laughed at me when we started out: ‘What are you going to do? You’re crazy, you’ll never get there. Your technicians have no experience.’ This confirmed that the team was very competitive.”
Ueda won again in Rio in 1999 before the team switched to Aprilia in 2001. Cecchinello won LCR Aprilia’s first race at the Catalan GP on his way to fourth overall. He would retire from racing at the end of 2003 with seven victories and 12 further podiums.
‘People laughed at me at first, they said I was crazy’