Asking the man who knows: Exclusive interview with Alvaro Bautista’s crew chief Tom O’Kane

Despite the understandable media focus on the riders, MotoGP is essentially a team sport. All the natural talent and relentless work of a MotoGP rider only amounts to true competitiveness when he’s also got a good bike and the support of an excellent team to help him.
When Alvaro Bautista moved to the MotoGP class, his team suddenly became much bigger than it was in previous seasons in the smaller categories. And in every MotoGP team the most important go-to guy for a rider every weekend is his crew chief who represents the link between the feedback of the rider and what needs to be done on the bike.
Since the smiley Spaniard joined the Rizla Suzuki team last year, he has the calm and affable Tom O’Kane by his side who’s already worked in MotoGP for over a decade and with riders like Kenny Roberts Jr. and Chris Vermeulen.
We met up with the Irishman at the 2010 post-season test in Valencia and asked him a few questions about his work with Alvaro.

Looking at the current weather* would it make any sense for you to go out in wet conditions now to test? Do you have wet tyres to use?
We do have a set of wet tyres sitting there, yes, but probably it’d be better to wait and see if the conditions improve. But if it looks like it’s gonna be wet for both days then we might make the decision to run in the rain.

But regarding the development of the bike it wouldn’t make much sense for you to go out?
No, we only go out in the rain if we can’t get any dry time.

Okay, so let’s start the interview with your educational background and how you got into MotoGP.
I’ve got a Bachelor of Engineering and Electronic Engineering. I first started as an electronic engineer about twenty years ago and then moved into this job.

And how did you get to work for the Suzuki team?
I used to worked for Kenny Roberts Sr. when I started first in 1998 with Kenny’s team. I continued there until Kenny Jr. was working here with Suzuki and he asked me to come across and work as crew chief with him.

You’ve worked with different riders over the years, all with different riding styles and probably different ways of working as well. What is the biggest difference for you and what do you try to do when you get a new rider to work with?
You have to adapt to the rider. You know, Alvaro for example is much less interested in the detail of what we do with the bike than some of the other riders. Which for me is the ideal situation if you can have it. But on the other hand, when you have a rider who wants more technical information about the bike, you can’t say to him “No, no, you can’t have it”. You have to try to give him what he wants. But for me the ideal situation is if you have a rider who is just thinking about going fast and giving us the feedback on whether we are going in the right direction or not.

How much do you rely on what the rider tells you about the bike instead of taking it from the data?
100%. The data just gives us the quantity. The rider tells us what’s going on and we check the data just to see basically how to fix the problem that the rider reports on.

Are there ever situations when the rider tells you one thing, but the data maybe tells you differently? How do you go about that?
No, the thing is, people maybe sometimes overestimate how much the data tells you. There is not one channel on there that, for example, tells you how well the bike is turning. There are a number of channels where you can see the lean angle and the forces and so on, but if the rider says the bike doesn’t finish the corner then you can’t go to the data and see a channel which says “No, the bike is actually finishing the corner”. It just doesn’t work that way.

When asked about the impact of the new feedback coming from Valentino Rossi Ducati’s General Manager Filippo Preziosi also said something similar, that for the development of a bike there’s maximally 50% of it coming from the data, the other 50% comes from the feeling of the rider. Would you agree with that?
I don’t even think you can put a percentage on it. Because I think the data only plays a supporting role, you can’t really break that down into percentages. It’s not like it’s 50% rider here and 50% data there. It’s more like you have the rider information here and in the background you have the data when you want to go into more detail, you know.

You said that it’s an ideal situation for you if the rider doesn’t want to know that much about what you do with the bike and only focuses on going fast. But how much do you think is still necessary for the rider to know about the technical details of the bike, do you think it helps them to do their job better if they know what’s going on?
Up to a certain extend. Obviously certain things they have to be 100% aware of, like the tyre situation and some basic things. But if a rider asks you for example “What’s my steering head angle?”, for me it doesn’t help the situation for the rider to know this. It means that maybe he has experience with other bikes that he’s ridden in the past and he’s known what the geometry was and it may sort of create an image in his mind before he gets on the bike as to what to expect from the bike. It’s much better that the rider gets on the bike and just feels it as a combination and then comes back and says that it either turns well or it doesn’t turn well or it tucks the front or the front feels planted. No preconceived ideas is always better for us.

With Alvaro coming from 125cc and 250cc bikes, how do you think does that compare to MotoGP and how he maybe needed to change his way of working to tell you exactly what he feels on the bike?
Well, I actually asked Alvaro that same question around this time last year [testing at Valencia 2009] not long after he started to ride the bike and he said there was a much bigger step going from the 125cc bike to the 250cc than it was from the 250cc to MotoGP bike. In terms of dynamics, in terms of how heavy the bike was to change direction and what it felt like to run into the corner. The big difference for him was going from 125cc to 250cc.

When the rider comes in and just says that the bike doesn’t turn well, how do you actually translate that into what you can do with the bike?
It just comes from past experience really. You know, we obviously have an idea of a base setting. Okay, that same setting doesn’t work on every type of corner or every type of race track or in every grip condition. But just from past experience on how our bike has worked in different types of corners and different types of conditions; if he comes in with a certain comment like for example that the front tyre doesn’t give him a good feeling going through the corner, then the first thing you think about is of course the tyre compound. If the tyre compound is correct for the conditions then you’ll look at suspension positions and if the suspension positions look like they are in the ballpark, giving the correct steering geometry, then you start to think about other things like weight distribution and so on. All based on your past experience. You basically check the simple things first, like have we got the right tyre in there, have we the right position of the bike going into the corner. And then you move on to the more difficult stuff.

Speaking about previous data: How much does the work change for you in the 2011 season when you already have the data for him going to all the tracks?
It’ll be much better. It gives us a platform then. We have for the initial setup every weekend the previous data. And at every race track so far with Alvaro we had to take last year’s [Chris Vermeulen’s] setting and then go from there. But next year it’ll be straightforward, we know what’s the best setting and begin with that.

Does the work for you change at all with Alvaro being the only rider in the team? Because this year there’s also been a lot of data exchange between Loris and Alvaro.
Yeah, it makes it difficult in one way and easier in another. The difficulty is that we have less feedback. Sometimes with two riders and two different styles, you get more of an overview of the situation. Like for example if we go to a race track next year and we can’t get any grip, we have to ask us if it’s the track or is it the setting. If we have two riders and one of them is getting grip and the other is not, then we immediately know that there’s nothing wrong with the track, we have to get the grip out of the bike. That’s the negative side.
The positive side is that the Japanese Suzuki staff is now really focused on Alvaro and basically we have twice the attention that we had last year.

There’s of course the worry that with only one rider there’ll also be less development, because Suzuki probably pulled out the other bike for a reason…
Well, no. I mean, we have the test menu for this [Valencia] test and the development is actually accelerating.

Can you tell us what you’re testing?
In this test it will mainly be chassis items and some engine items also.

Talking about new test items, how much can you actually adjust a bike for a certain rider? Can you really make it completely his, so that others would have difficulty to ride it well, even though the components are the same?
Well, we have enough adjustments to get it completely wrong. [laughs] I mean really, these bikes are so adjustable. You know, with a given rider you work within a certain area and every now and again you find a direction that moves you to another area of setting and hopefully you’re moving to a higher level and then you can work from there. But yeah, they are very, very adjustable. Most of the settings we keep close to the baseline.

Which would probably also make it easier to keep the bike universally rideable when a new rider comes in.
Well, with Alvaro coming in last year, because both his and Loris’ background were the same, being 125cc and 250cc riders, no Superbikes or anything, it was easy. We just started him with Loris’ setting completely and started from there at this Valencia test last year.

It seems that Alvaro has the tendency, already visible in the smaller classes, not to do too well in practice and qualifying, but then fire up on Sunday and improve immensely in the race. How much of those troubles can you actually trace back to problems with the bike, or lack of experience in the class or just to Alvaro’s style of racing?
Well, probably 90% of my focus next year will be trying to get us up the grid and start from the first three rows, minimum the first three rows, every time if we can. How to do that I haven’t fully worked out yet [laughs]. But from our side, the technical side, we do everything possible that we can. You know, getting a better setting in the first session is always gonna help us. The problem with being the first year on the bike at every race track is that every first session is usually spent just getting a good baseline. Next year is gonna be better, because first of all we have an extra session. Even if it’s only 45 minutes, it’s still an extra session and it’s an extra period between sessions where he can think about what’s going on. And the second thing next year is that we will be starting from a good setting in every session, hopefully. Those things I think are gonna help next year.

In the races themselves he’s often fallen back a bit in the first few laps and then improved his laptimes immensely towards the end of the race. Afterwards he was often quoted that he didn’t have a good feeling with the bike at the beginning. Can you explain why his feeling with the bike sometimes changes so abruptly during a race?
Yeah, well, there is a technical matter there as well of getting the feeling and the grip from the tyres in the first few laps. And when I say tyres I mean the rear tyre basically. Some teams and riders are obviously getting that. All you have to do is look at Casey [Stoner] on some of his outlaps on new tyres and you see what can be done. That’s something we really have to work on as well. But I think it’s one thing to get good grip and feeling in the first few laps, but also if you’re trying to do that and you’re in 12th place, it makes it twice as hard. Because you can’t ride the bike the way you want to ride it as you’re basically trying to get past other riders first.

Finally, in terms of rider differences, is there anything special about working with Alvaro? You’ve mentioned before that he wants to know less about the bike than other riders.
Just his ability to race is better than anyone that I’ve seen for a long, long time. And how much fun he gets from racing.

Thank you very much for the interview.

We’d like to thank to Tom O’Kane for taking the time to talk to us and Tim Walpole for helping us set up interviews with the Suzuki team members at Valencia.
Interview by Vroom Media. Photos courtesy of Rizla Suzuki MotoGP Team.

*[It had been raining the morning of the first test day with forecasts being a bit unpredictable]