In the latest of his exclusive monthly columns for Crash.net, Mike Nicks has an in-depth discussion with Dani Pedrosa's mentor Alberto Puig, highlights Nicky Hayden's self-analysis, talks tyres with Rizla Suzuki crew chief Tom O'Kane and much more...
Puig: Dani just wants balance.
"LET’S GO somewhere where it’s less noisy," Alberto Puig tells me. I’m hoping that we can leave the clatter of the Repsol Honda pit box and retreat to the calm of a hospitality unit or a transporter so that we can talk about
Dani Pedrosa. But Puig, Pedrosa’s mentor for almost a decade, walks just a few metres to the garage door, where the racket is only half a decibel less.
Racing people - the really ruthless ones - are often like that. The conveniences that other mortals crave just go by them. My experience with Puig reminded me of a time when I was interviewing
Kenny Roberts Senior outside the Team KR transporter during a
MotoGP test at
Jerez as a February wind drilled across the Andalucian plain. My fingers felt colder than Sir Ralph Fiennes’ digits on an Arctic crossing as I struggled to write accurate notes, and I asked Kenny if we could move inside somewhere.
"Racin’s hard," he intoned. "We’re stayin’ here."
A few minutes later, as the blue crept from my fingers towards my wrists, he finally showed compassion and said, "We’ll go inside." But crying tough is the style of so many of the really successful people in racing. Which brings me back to the conversation with Alberto Puig.
Leave the pitbox, even for a few minutes, on a Friday evening when there’s work to be done on preparing Pedrosa’s Honda RC212V for Sunday’s race? No way. So, against the background of a slamming metal door as Repsol personnel ferry gear in and out of the garage, I ask him if he is worried, like most other teams, about the phenomenal speed displayed by Casey Stoner’s Marlboro Ducati GP7 when the Australian won the opening Qatar round just two weeks earlier. The response is typically Puig: forthright and a bit ornery.
