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There is no better time than the last days of the year to reflect on the season that has just ended and what is expected in the near future. That is precisely what we did with Lucio Cecchinello in this long chat. In which the LCR team owner analyzed the 2024 of his team and Honda, also talking to us about what he expects from the arrival of Romano Albesiano and the situation KTM is in.
How would you define this 2024 in one word?
"Below expectations, there's no point getting around that. Fortunately we finished with less of a bitter taste in our mouths than what was the beginning. We knew it was going to be tough, but we had hopes that we could be closer to the Ducatis, instead the GP24s took another step forward. We got closer to the 2023 Ducatis, Marc Marquez aside, with respect to last year, we did make a step forward, but we thought we were closer."
In amongst all this, you are the ones who did better: Zarco and Nakagami were ahead of the factory riders in the final standings and LCR itself with the factory team.
"I think the credit goes not so much to the team, but to Zarco, who was able to interpret this Honda well. We already had the opportunity to work with him when he replaced Nakagami in 2019 and we appreciated his riding technique that makes him be very performing in corner exit, sacrificing a little bit the braking phase. If we go and look at the data, Johann doesn't have as efficient braking as Marini and Mir, but he comes out a little better: he gains more in acceleration than he loses in braking."
Zarco comes from Ducati, the best bike on the grid, and he got on the Honda, the worst: how did he manage to handle this?
"The first thing was to be very sincere and very honest with him, plus Johann knew he was going to ride a less competitive bike. No one like a rider knows how to see the merits and flaws of the opponent's bike, so he knew it was going to be tough, but even he was hoping for better in the early part of the season. We experienced moments, and I'm not ashamed to say it, of tension inside the pits. Sometimes he would come back in and express his frustration at not being able to be fast. Some 'putain!' flew around! (laughs). It's OK, but you have to wash your dirty laundry at home and outside the pit walls he didn't externalize his frustration in the same way."
How did you handle him?
"He was good at getting over it quickly, and on my part I always tried to give him the vision of a long-term project. Not surprisingly, it was I who had convinced HRC to do a two-year contract with an option and Johann to agree to go and race the Suzuka 8 Hours, which he won. As a team we didn't put any vetoes, despite the fact that it's a race that involves risks, physical stress and also some confusion, because you have to adapt to a different bike and tires, to a track he had never seen. Zarco understood that this initial difficulty could be turned into a future opportunity and so it was. Especially towards the end of the season we went a few times directly into Q2, we made a few Top 10s putting behind riders who were usually in front of us. The year ended with a different, more optimistic outlook, but we are realistic and expect that at the beginning of next season we won't be able to be in the top 10 on a regular basis. The goal is to get closer over the course of the year and finish it with some Top 5s, if we also have some luck on our side."
You have a 20-year relationship with Honda.
"In thirty-six years of racing, counting even those as a rider, thirty-one I spent with Honda, we could have a silver wedding anniversary! - joked the team manager - but in MotoGP it's twenty years."
Yours was also the last Honda team to win, after last year's Austin GP with Alex Rins. Do you think this is the already low point in HRC's history? What was the mistake, if any?
"In my opinion it was the so-called 'perfect storm,' if we go and analyze the history, what was happening already for a few years was that Marc Marquez until 2020 was dominating or always fighting for the World Championship regularly. There is the saying, 'don't change a winning bike,' and the changes that HRC was making on Marc's bike were minimal, they were small evolutions. If you go and see the design and pictures of the bikes as they were in 2012 until 2021, it was quite similar as a design. In 2022 there was a bigger step on the bike, the dimensions changed, the very balance of the bike changed. Until 2020, Honda had been following Marc's directions, which was to have a very agile and unbalanced bike on the front. This was actually starting to cause problems for more normal riders, like Jorge Lorenzo or Pol Espargarò, Dani Pedrosa himself was starting to have some more difficulty in being competitive. The bike with Marc was fine, he was managing the greater load on the front using a harder tire than the others, in fact with Crutchlow we followed the same path. The number of crashes we made though was quite important, while he could sometimes save it with his elbow. For example at the beginning of the 2020 season in Jerez he was giving a second a lap to everyone, then he lost the front and after he got back on the bike he made a great recovery. So Honda said to wait until Marc was healed, as we know instead he had complications. During Marc's absence we did nothing in terms of evolution while the others continued to evolve their projects. The work was beginning to move much more on aerodynamics, and in 2021 when Marc did a few races he reported the step forward made by the others. In 2022 Honda came up with a completely new design. The bike was actually completely different, so different that we had to understand it. From there came the difficulty of having to chase the gap to the rival manufacturers, which meanwhile continued to grow. We improved the 2022 and 2023 bike, but the others always kept raising the bar. If you go and look at Ducati's lap times between 2022 and 2024, it shattered all the records, so it put us in trouble, that's my key takeaway. As Valentino and other people who were working with Japanese manufacturers also rightly said, the fact that during the pandemic many Japanese engineers could not travel meant that they did not realize the gap of technologies that was being created, we were always lagging behind.
It seems that Honda has now changed pace, not only in structure. I'm thinking of the arrival of Aleix Espargarò as a test rider, Nakagami who will stay, and then especially the arrival of Romano Albesiano as technical director. Seeing these changes from Honda was not so obvious, was losing Marquez the shake-up that was needed?
"I don't want to be misunderstood, Honda's fortune was Marc Marquez. But in some ways it was also its bad luck. He raised the bar so high that he overshadowed the potential of the bike. There was a lot of confidence that Marc could become competitive again, without having to change or overhaul the bike. Marquez's major decision to split the contract, accepted by Honda with the knowledge that it could not offer a competitive bike. So the decision was made to roll up their sleeves, to revise the way of working and to start using European engineers as well because they realized that in Japan they are very good on the production of materials, alloys, everything that is technology. But in application in racing perhaps it lacks a little bit of culture, which right now is mostly found in Europe and Italy."
Were you surprised by Albesiano's hiring?How did you take the news?
"I was not surprised, I had already heard within Honda about the need to make use of additional European figures to strengthen what was the RCV project. What has happened, and what I think is a positive aspect, is that new managers have come in (they change every five years) who have a more open mindset to the rest of the world, not everything necessarily has to be done in Japan because we have to have our industries work and be proud of our technology. There had already been some openings over the years, like leaving Nissin, Showa, their suspension company, leaving their frame manufacturers in Japan to do a project with Kalex. They started working with electronic guys, ex-Marelli or ex-Ducati. We know that Filippo Tosi and many other Italians in HRC today hold key positions. So Albesiano's arrival is another piece of a bigger picture to make HRC become more global."
Did you already know Albesiano? How did you welcome him?
"I can't say I knew him, because we had the opportunity to meet in the paddock. I had two fairly in-depth talks with Romano in previous years, because he asked me on two occasions to switch to Aprilia."
Instead, you brought him to Honda.
"No, I didn't bring him. He was the one who understood that it was a professional opportunity, a new challenge, because after a while it is also right to accept new challenges. When I talked to him, I liked Romano right away because he is a very calibrated person, very clear and very honest, he seems extremely prepared but also extremely respectful. We always had very pleasant conversations."
Leaving Honda aside, how do you as a satellite team owner assess Martin and Pramac winning the World Championship? Is it good for the environment, and for all satellite teams, that a factory team did not win?
"It does look extremely good from the point of view of a satellite team. It's obvious that from the outside it may look a little strange, but nowadays a system of work has been triggered such that the technologies to be applied are so exasperated and difficult to understand and select, that a team with two factory riders can't make it alone to carry out the development necessary to improve. So, the factory teams, they have realized that they have to make use of satellite teams and provide them with the same material, in order to collect more data, to have more accurate information, and not to risk going the wrong way. The fact that Ducati has become so competitive, I think is also due to the fact that they have worked with so many teams and so many riders, collecting a lot of data. And therefore, they found themselves in a strange situation."
Some people had doubts that they would allow a satellite team to win.
"I didn't have any doubts, because manufacturers like Ducati, Honda, KTM, and Aprilia, when they make a commitment, they honor it. Because there are contracts, which are managed by serious people. When they told me that something would happen like a bad tire or an electrical problem that wouldn't let them win, I replied that that wouldn't happen, and in the end they accepted the defeat. Which then, is not a defeat because Ducati always won anyway and they welcomed the result as an effect of a sporting result. At the end of the day, ours is a sport, and the moment it were to be piloted in a less than honest way, it would no longer be a sport, and it would not be serious for a company like Ducati. They behaved in an exemplary way, as I was sure they would, and I think this can happen again in the future with Ducati, or with other teams."
You hope it will happen with Honda.
"No. What can happen is that after one, two or three times, maybe then the policy changes. But right now we have arrived at such a setup that the really strong riders, in the future, will not go to a satellite team and then they will not fail to make a difference in a factory team. I don't envision a Pedro Acosta coming to race in LCR, but I expect him to go to HRC."
In your opinion, how worrisome is KTM's situation for MotoGP?
"I have a hard time making a serious or accomplished judgment because I don't have all the elements in hand. I spoke with Hervé Poncharal, and from what I understand, KTM Motorsport is one of the companies in the group, which has its own revenues and its own budgets. I can imagine that they have three main revenues: one from the parent company KTM, which will probably be gone; another from Dorna, which is television rights, participation rights, etc.; and another from sponsors. Knowing a little bit about the costs of a MotoGP team, and talking to Poncharal, in my opinion, using the existing material; freezing the development; and trying to adopt a somewhat cost-saving policy, between TV rights and sponsorships, including a very important one like Red Bull, I think the team can do the races even if the KTM entry is missing. That doesn't mean they can do them in a winning way, but on the other hand, as an electronics engineer who works at KTM told me, the new bikes and materials were already ready. So, they will freeze the development, but of a 2025 bike. I want to be optimistic and hope that there will be no problems for either teams, workers or riders for the 2025-2026 season. Then it is obvious that participation in 2027 could be a problem."
It would be a blow to the championship to lose KTM, after already losing Suzuki.
"Yes, however, I think there could be some surprises for 2027, with some other manufacturers that could maybe be interested in taking over the KTM project, or entering MotoGP. I still hope that between now and 2027, maybe on the back of a restarting economy and the end of some wars, BMW could maybe regain enthusiasm and decide to enter."
