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Stefan Bradl won the 2021 Moto2 World Championship on the Kalex against Marc Márquez and raced for the LCR-Honda team for three years, from 2013 to 2014, with an HRC contract. His best results were a 2nd place Pole Position at Laguna Seca in 2013. The 35-year-old Bavarian rider has achieved a total of 7 GP wins: two in the 125 class and five in the Moto2. Furthermore, he's been in the MotoGP Top 10 fifty-three times. This makes him the best German GP rider in the premier class by far.
After LCR, Bradl raced for half a season in the Forward team on a Yamaha Open in 2015, before taking Marco Melandri's place alongside Álvaro Bautista in the Gresini-Aprilia team in August 2015 and staying there until the end of 2016. After the World Superbike Championship season in the Red Bull Honda SBK factory team with Nicky Hayden (who had of a fatal accident on his race bike in Misano in May 2017), Bradl took on the role of MotoGP test rider for HRC.
Bradl, who's been married to his long-time partner, Jana, since last August, and is the father of an almost three-year-old daughter named Alina, has also worked for the Austrian private broadcaster Servus TV since 2018. Read the first part of the interview HERE.
Stefan, in the spring of 2024, before signing your new contract, you were convinced that HRC would continue with you because there weren't many good alternatives. But, after you, Aleix Espargaró and Taka Nakagami were also hired. What will you be doing, specifically?
"I'll do two days of testing in Sepang next week, on December 18th and 19th. And, to be honest, I'm happy that the jobs I've been handling alone for the past seven years are now being divided between two other colleagues, because my area of responsibility has continued to increase since the beginning of 2018. The workload has been really heavy, especially in the last two years. From 2020 to 2022, I often replaced Marc Márquez in the Repsol team. I also replaced Morbidelli, Lorenzo, Crutchlow, Mir, and Rins at Honda. Instead, KTM, has had two very strong test riders for years, and now they have three with Dani Pedrosa. Pol Espargaró and Jonas Folger. I'm very happy that the workload is becoming a little more normal for me. As a manufacturer with concessions, we now have six wild cards a year instead of three. I couldn't have done it alone. All thosee tests on different tracks were really difficult, because there were many technical changes. The changes were often drastic. In the past, I was often called upon to replace riders at very short notice. 2024 was the first year I didn't have to replace a starting rider. But I can't say exactly what my testing schedule will be like in the future, because I don't know how the jobs will be distributed, yet. I certainly announced that I'll no longer do wild cards unless it's absolutely necessary. However, you can never completely rule out replacing another rider, but I have no objection to wild cards being distributed to Aleix and Taka. The rest remains to be seen. Thanks to the D concessions, we have more tires in Honda. We also have the ability to allow all factory riders to participate in private tests. I think the Japanese will make a reasonable allocation. I haven't received any information yet on exactly what that's going to look like."
Did Honda expect Johann Zarco to provide valuable input to LCR Honda for the development of the RC213V, given that he had ridden for Yamaha, KTM, and Ducati in the past? Did he provide useful ideas?
"We also expected contributions from Jorge Lorenzo, Pol Espargaró, Joan Mir, Alex Rins, and Luca Marini, in other words, all the new riders. They all came from Suzuki, KTM or Ducati. There were all kinds of opinions and feedback. Ultimately, everyone did their job to the best of their ability and provided input based on their previous experience."
But there seemed to be no engineers in Japan drawing the right conclusions. That's why Honda's performance remained at a very low level for almost five years.
"Yes, you can't turn a Honda into a Ducati or a Suzuki. It doesn't depend on the riders, and it doesn't depend on the comments the riders make. Honda has to build a bike that's competitive."
At times, there were discussions about whether you, as a test rider, were the scapegoat because the weaknesses were never eliminated from the 2020.
"Marc Márquez always said that he could only provide information, then the engineers had to build the bike. I agree with him. I always got along very well with him, even when it came to figuring out where the weak points of the bike were, and I still get along with him today. I've also always exchanged ideas with the other Honda riders, Mir, Marini, and Zarco. The data is entirely shared, everyone has access to the comments and data of the other riders. If I had been telling fairy tales in the past, HRC would certainly not have kept me for seven years and then give me a new contract for 2025 and 2026."
After your first year as a tester in 2018, Marc Márquez said: "Since Bradl became a test rider, no material arrives in my garage that isn't better than the previous one."
"Yes, many of my statements coincide with the suggestions of the current riders. No matter what they're called, everyone has their own way of communicating their opinion to the technicians. When we talk in English with the Spaniards and Italians, the statements are the same. We riders can't do more."
Almost five years have passed since the failed test in Qatar in 2020, without any visible progress. The results obtained by Mir, Marini, Nakagami, and Zarco in 2024 were mostly very disappointing. Nothing has changed in terms of the numerous falls by Honda riders either. In 2019, Marc Márquez had won 12 out of 19 races and finished 2nd five times. Crutchlow had three GP wins between 2016 and 2018. Have you ever felt frustrated in recent years that you thought 'will I look for another team'?
"No, I haven't thought about it. This opportunity never came up, and I never seriously thought about it. I'm very comfortable in HRC, even if the results aren't up to our expectations. I'm very happy with my team in the European Test Team. Also, from a human aspect, we get along very well. But success would be important for our morale. Everyone is working hard and making an effort, from the engineers to the mechanics. You can't blame anyone for that. Now we need a new approach and new ideas from HRC's top management, so things can go in the right direction."
But you were in the KTM racing department in Austria in the spring of 2021. You weren't as enthusiastic then because HRC only ever gave you one-year contracts, while Pirro was signed on by Ducati for four years.
"Yes, that's true. I went to Mattighofen once. It's only two and a half hours from Zahling. Then I got a two-year contract with HRC with an option for 2024."
