Company – Confined with … Herve Poncharal, Tech3 Racing team manager – KTM occasions

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Confined with … Herve Poncharal, Tech3 Racing team manager

Company - Confined with ... Herve Poncharal, Tech3 Racing team manager - KTM occasions

What are the main players in the motorcycle world doing during the lockdown linked to the Covid-19 pandemic? Herve Poncharal, team manager of the Tech3 Racing team, spoke to Journal moto du Net.

MNC: Where are you confined ?

Herve Poncharal : I am confined to my home in Bormes-les-Mimosas, in my house which is very close to the Tech3 office. I go there regularly, at least three times a week, to work when I can’t do it from home, to pick up the mail and the documents that are there. I’m confined all alone between home and office, which allows me to take stock of myself and the future we want to try to give to the MotoGP World Championship and life in general….

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MNC: How are your days going? ?

H. P. : From 9am to 7pm I spend most of my time on the phone, whether it’s with my drivers or with members of my team confined to their homes, our sponsors and our manufacturer KTM. I also spend a lot of time with Carmelo Ezpeleta, the boss of La Dorna (MotoGP promoter) and his son Carlos Ezpeleta, who is the sporting director. The three of us are trying to figure out how best to ensure that the Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP teams can continue to meet their financial commitments and that they can stay companies alive. The goal is for everyone to be ready to go when we can start the championship again. Video conferencing, phone, emails and not a lot of other stuff, unfortunately … It’s not very cheerful, but we are trying to move the situation forward. Sometimes you feel like you have made good progress, then two days later the health situation and the decisions of the authorities destroy everything and you have to start thinking again in relation to a situation that has evolved…

MNC: What do you miss the most ?

H. P. : What I miss the most – and this is also maybe what I miss the least, sometimes we have contradictions! – it’s to be able to move, go out … I am used to being excessively active, I love people, I like to meet people, discuss, drink coffee with friends, eat in restaurants, take a motorcycle or bike ride, take a dip in the sea and swim since I am lucky enough to live on the shores of the Mediterranean and at this time we are starting to enjoy it… I miss it a lot but what I miss maybe even more it’s the paddock, which I have been walking for 40 years. It’s all my friends, it’s my whole life, it’s my second family or even my family as I have the chance to work with one of my brothers and with my daughter. The adrenaline rush of practice sessions, the evening dinners with the team where you exchange good – or not so good – memories of the day and try to analyze and dissect performances. It’s my life and I miss it a lot … Maybe what I miss the least are the airports, the flights, the planes, the jet lag, the difficulty sleeping and this kind of permanent stress that makes that we never have time to settle down and stop to reflect in a perpetual hubbub … There we are in a kind of oasis, without noise. You can read everything you didn’t have time to read, listen to all the music you didn’t have time to listen to and most of all, you have time to think! It is true that this is a very special crisis, it is shocking to many people because it is powerful and dangerous. Human activity is paralyzed and one can reflect on the way human society is organized. Is it a good system that we want to continue, or do we want to make it evolve into a slightly better system ?

MNC: Are you afraid ?

H. P. : Yes of course, I am not Superman! We all have fears … The Gauls were afraid that the sky would fall on their heads, but like everyone else I am afraid of falling ill, afraid of death, afraid of finding myself without resources, without a home, without having enough to feed me. Today thank God I am not in that type of situation, but what scares me is that I still have about 40 employees who I consider a bit like my family. However, when you are a business leader, you have a commitment, and that is to continue paying them a salary so that they can continue to live decently. We are working on this, among others with Carmelo Ezpeleta. We also ask ourselves questions about the sustainability of the company as it is … Until this crisis, MotoGP was a healthy championship that worked very well: we were crumbling under the demands since we were considering doing 22 races from 2022! It’s not much of a scare, but I do feel concerned that even when the virus is gone, the 2021 and 2022 seasons may be complicated. It’s up to us to think – and maybe this is something exciting – to see how to evolve the MotoGP championship so that it is more in tune with an era, an economy and living conditions that are going evolve from what we experienced until early 2020 …

MNC: A book, a film, a series, a record to recommend ?

H. P. : So that’s complicated, there are so many! I love hundreds of films… Oh yes, since I live near the Mediterranean and I love diving, I really liked the Big Blue… In all humility, little Jacques Mayol at the beginning of the film made me think of me as a child. These landscapes, these sensations in the water, the cicadas, the sun that burns your skin, and then these challenges and this frank camaraderie… These are things that speak to me and that look a little like my life. of child and adolescent here, on the shores of the Mediterranean. The book is the same, there are many, but maybe "" by Bernard Moitessier. It’s a very beautiful story that marks the very beginning of a certain ecological awareness: a sailor, a few minutes away from winning the biggest sailing race around the world in the 60s or 70s, turns around. and sets out again because the idea of ​​finding civilization after having sailed solo for so long seems unbearable to him … I have a lot of admiration for sailors. We are talking about containment right now, but they are facing this loneliness on their boat, in the midst of elements that are sometimes great but sometimes raging. It is very beautiful ! I also really liked Milan Kundera’s "The unbearable lightness of being", which traces what happened in Prague in 1968. It was a moment of unbearable lightness, until the arrival of the Russian tanks … I liked it a lot. In the playoffs, sorry I don’t watch it. What I love right now are animal reports! The real wild life in nature, the ingenuity, the beauty and the fragile balance of this life, the magic of this organization in nature … It is truly incredible and it must make us think.

MNC: Your Favorite Motorcycle Video ?

H. P. : In video what I like to see again, even if now I know the outcome, it is the race of the world championship 250, (in 2000, editor’s note), where my two pilots Olivier Jacque and Shinya Nakano were fighting for the title … They do the whole race wheel to wheel and Olivier beats Shinya by 14 thousandths of a second: he becomes world champion! It was a magical moment and, as is often the case, a moment of absolute happiness for Olivier, with whom we had practically lived our life together since 1995. We started out as little rookies who arrived in the World Cup and we achieved the title of champion of the world, which allowed us to move up to the top 500 category. And on the other side there was someone fantastic who had not been unworthy, Shinya Nakano, who saw his dream of a title fly away… C t was a great moment in life where we shouldn’t add to the celebration either, out of respect for Shinya. When I want to watch a motorcycle race, this is especially important to me !

MNC: The first thing you will do at the end of the lockdown ?

H. P. : Unfortunately the end of confinement will be gradual and we will not be able to do everything we would like to do … But if I could relive my usual life it would be to take my motorcycle, call all my very good friends and meet up on the port to drink a good beer, joke until late at night, then maybe go eat a salad or a pizza all together making plans for the next day … I would certainly also do a ride with my ATV in the hill which is very beautiful … In spring it is the brilliant moment: there are flowers, small birds and still a little water flowing in the small streams … I miss all of that a lot. I look forward !

Interview by Eric MICHEL

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