Ramón Forcada, chief mechanic, immune to discouragement
Alex Barros right-hand man and the person who most believes in the potential of the Brazilian rider of the Repsol Honda Team
Demanding and untiring. This is how those who know and work with him every day define Ramón Forcada. This year Ramón joined the Repsol Honda Team as Chief Mechanic for Alex Barros, HRC number one rider. With more than fifteen years experience as a mechanic in the Motorcycling World Championship, almost ten of them working with Honda, this year Forcada has taken charge of the section focussed on Alex Barros within the official Honda team. A real challenge for him. Despite the average start of the season, this tremendous non-conformist is still convinced to be able to fight for the Championship title. What did you do before the Motorcycle World Championship?Before the World Championship I worked two years as a mechanic with two motorbikes in the Spanish Championship. Youve probably worked with many riders in all these years.Yes, quite a few. Lets see if I dont forget any of them. Alex Crivillé, Jorge Martínez Aspar and Charlie Giró. Then I worked two years as suspension mechanic at Showa and, even if it is a bit different, I worked with Waldman, Romboni, DAntín, Cardús and Biaggi. Ive also been with Checa, both in the 250cc and in the 500cc; with Xaus when he took part in the 5 250cc races in 1995 and with Gibernau in a 250cc race when he was racing the Spanish Championship. Kocinsky, Puig, Borja, Barros, Ukawa… Having worked with so many riders, would you say that every rider is a world onto himself or are they in general very similar?They are very different, they have all got their little ways; some of them are unbearable and some are nice guys. It is important to know them well and to know how to communicate with them. Two riders can tell you the same thing but what is really happening may be totally different. You need to know them well, so youll have to say less to know what they mean and be able to offer a solution. Any curious anecdote?With regard to communication…The last year I worked with Alex Barros, before he went to Yamaha, we didnt even need to talk. He entered the garage, gave me a sign, and I already knew what he meant. In the end we reached a point where he only needed to cross the finish line and make a small gesture, and I would understand. We hadnt anything prepared we just understood each other with a look. Even Sito was surprised about how well we understood each other. Does this mean that Alex is the rider with whom youve had the best relation?Yes, hes the one Ive always understood and understand best. Its been a relationship of many years. We also were lucky in 2002, when the four races with the four-stroke machine went so good. It was partly due to the fact that we understand each other so well, because the bike was new and we didnt know anything about it. This excellent communication helped us for example when the Japanese gave us the bike in Motegi on Thursday before the practices, telling us that the setting was okay and that we should not touch it, but I knew that it wouldnt be okay for Alex. I didnt know the bike, but I knew Alex and I also knew that the setting wouldnt fit him. We changed it and we won the race. Knowing a bike well helps a lot but knowing the rider is even a greater help. Riders with little habits?Kocinsky was the most complicated of all. It was very difficult to work with him because although he had a prodigious memory he was such a perfectionist that he would sometimes go over the limits. He wouldnt accept that his bike wouldnt work well, but all bikes have problems. If the bike doesnt skid, just open the throttle and youll see how it does. All bikes have limits and if you go too far the bike will probably stop working well. Kocinsky never understood that a bike wouldnt work perfectly. Any rider saying that his bike works perfect is implying that he doesnt open the throttle enough. Which rider explains best what is happening?Alex knows quite well how to tune the bike. I personally think that it is rather a psychological than a practical thing. I mean a good tester is the one who knows when things arent working well. Most of the riders are doubtful or insecure when you change anything. Giró had things quite clear as well, but things are easier with 125cc machines. Crivillé was also one of those riders who had things clear. Have you worked with all makes and in all classes?In all classes, but not with all makes, because Ive never worked with Yamaha. I started with JJ. Cobas, then I changed to factory Aprilias with Showa and finally to Honda, first in satellite teams and now in the official team. Which are the main differences between working with a satellite team and the official team, in the case of Honda?Its almost the same job. The difference is that you have much more to test in the official team and you have much more information available. You also have much more means, more spares, new parts. Priorities are also a point of difference because the manufacturers priority is always the official team. The fact of having to test much more things than the rest; is it an advantage or an inconvenience?Well, we havent had much time to test things this year and Alex wasnt physically in shape at the start of the season. He had just undergone surgery and that made things more difficult, because we couldnt test everything we needed. Despite having the advantage of being the one to take the final decision, it is the rider who has to feel comfortable. There is a lot of work in testing, although for the first rejections we have the test riders who are very good riders at the same level of those taking part in the World Championship. Whatever we decide to reject in this previous phase is notified to the satellite teams. The biggest inconvenience is that while we are testing something that might not work later, the rest of the teams are already riding under perfect conditions with already tested material. How do you evaluate development of the Bike?Honda has also been working hard. Theyve improved a lot since the start of the season and they will keep on doing it. The point is that were already on such a high level that it is impossible to make a big jump to improve a whole second, we are working on small details to improve some tenths of a second. We got new things for Germany and well probably also get new things in England. Improvements take a lot of time to arrive and they also imply large investments, but they are arriving and you can see it. Does the bike set-up reach your expectations?Its always the same problem. The bike has an enormous potential and you need a good rider to fine-tune it both in race and in practice to get a good place on the grid. Until Brazil Nicky was performing better in practice than in races; it might be due to the pressure from the outside or from himself, but we dont think that it has to do with the bike. The main problem of these bikes is that the engine is well above the frame and the tyres, and it harms the performance of these elements. You have to work a lot on the engine to be able to dose the power. If we would leave the engine free, so that the rider would get maximum power when opening the throttle, neither the rider nor the frame nor the chassis would stand the race. And the chattering?No, the chattering is not a problem of the bike but of the tyre compound. It appeared a few years ago because three or four years ago the engines were not as demanding to the tyres as now, they could be much softer. The higher the engine power the harder the tyres needed, the compounds were changed… The chattering appears because the tyre does not absorb vibrations and pushes upwards, thats when the bouncing appears. You already worked with Alex in the Pons team, how do you see him now?I think that the physical problems hes had have also had a psychological influence on him, hes not having his best moment. He also crashed 22 times last year and he doesnt know the reason for 20 of them yet. This was just too much for him. You may be a very brave rider and crashing might not affect you morally at all, but if you dont know the reason why you crashed you dont know how to avoid it next time, and that affects you. Checa and Crivillé are the bravest riders Ive known, but when they didnt know the reason for their crashes, they were afraid. Alex for example, was a rider that would made the best of new tyres but he doesnt this year. I think that this is a consequence of last season. Hes a rider that makes a lot of use of the front suspension and after last years crashes hes having trouble with having confidence in the bike. The main problems weve found this season is that we cannot find a setting he says he feels comfortable with. But he seemed to feel well during the tests after the GP in Le Mans…He did. He tested a different fork and got back the feeling, but now we have to find the right setting for every circuit. But for now, it is important that he believes in it. A rider needs to trusts his bike to be fast. This Championship has 180 km/h corners and you need a good feeling with your bike to do that. We recovered quite a lot of it and I think that we made a big step forward in Le Mans. How did the shoulder injury progress?Alex operation was a complicated one. They say that an injury like that takes almost a year to recover and he has undergone several tests for his optimal physical recovery. The fifteen days of rest after Le Mans were great for him, because he was physically and mentally tired after so much testing and so many kilometres; he wanted to keep on testing but he had to take some rest. The problem of these kind of operations isnt the movement, but the loss of muscles. After the working efforts they remain tense and cannot keep going at a hundred percent. Everything has to recover, but it seems that its getting better bit by bit. As for Alex final instants of the timed session, what do you think is happening to him, because once he takes the qualifying tyres and it seems that hes going to set fast times, he finally doesnt reach the frontIts got all to do with the head, lack of confidence to be able to make the best out of qualifying tyres. These kind of tyres only last one lap and if you are a rider who believes in the new tyres you just get on the bike, give it all, and theres the time. What is happening right now is the same thing thats happening in the race. It takes him a lot to follow the pace of the front riders. If you look at the lap times, you see that Alex has got the rhythm. But if you do not have a good qualifying, you have to start from the middle of the pack and loose some time until you make youre way to the front and get the rhythm. Once you have it, the others are already far away and you have to push much harder. When you start from the back and you have slower riders ahead, the best is to pass them in the first lap and not to let them hinder you much. But if you lack confidence and do not dare to pass them in the first lap, it means that youre going to do it in the third and this lost time is very difficult to recover. The lap times of all riders are very equal this year, they all have a very fast pace and the races are being very fast, so making up some tenths on the track is quite complicated. Were you able to test new parts during the short preseason or did you have to do it during the Championship?We tested only a few things because all of the riders, except for Alex and Valentino, were riding the same make as the previous year and it was easy for them to compare. We started from nothing, we had nothing to compare because Alex had never tested the 2003 bike, so we started directly with the new fork, the new suspension, the new engine… It may have been a good solution to start testing last years bike in order to be able to compare. Theres no use in saying that everything is working fine; you need to know if its working better or worse than what you had before; but we had no time. Alex had changed the make and the 2000 four-stroke was a much more primary bike because it was the first time the four-stroke was used for races. In addition we had used it only in four races and we did no private testing… This year we started to work with a bike that had been more or less done by the testers and we have developed it during the races. The fact of changing the make has made the path much longer than usual. This takes you to be especially keeping an eye on the times, because it all you have to compare and you havent got much possibilities to give real information. How do you prepare a Grand Prix; which is the starting point?We start from the data of the previous year, the track conditions and also the previous Grand Prix. Although most of these indicators are not valid enough on their own, if you put them all together you get information on the path to follow. You know for example, that on that track, according to the historic file, you need a harder spring than for the previous Grand Prix. You dont know exactly how much harder, but harder. Since you still have the previous track in mind and you know the current conditions of the bike you wont use last years setting, but it will help you to know the difference there was between those two GPs last year and if you should make the same changes this year. Is the historic file something you create or does the factory give it to you?Every technician keeps his own file, the factory gives you some information but they do not give you much information on the rest of the riders. Even if they have all the data, they keep it to develop the bike. I have a file from the times the class was called 500cc. Who has the last word as for the settings, the Chief Mechanic or the rider?The Chief Mechanic. If you want to work well and things to work out well, it must be the Chief Mechanic who takes the decision. The rider does not have to act as a technician, he has to explain what is happening, what is the problem and you have to solve it. It usually never works out well when the rider tells you what to do because he will be thinking about two things, the problem and the solution. So riders must have unquestioning faith in you…They have to, although some havent. Every member has to do his job for a team to work well. For example, if I dont trust my mechanics Ill spend the time supervising their job and wont do mine. If the rider doesnt trust me, hell be doing my job and not his. Im not going to ride the bike. Most of the problems the riders have are frequently very small, were talking about tenths or even hundreds of a second. If he also has to think about the solution, it just wont work out. The system is basically that he explains what is happening and then I explain to him what I have done, I never cheat. This is a way to give him a reference too: look, we had a problem, we did this and it worked out; that gives him confidence. The rider never decides what has to be done. Lets say the bike has a certain problem and you think that the solution is x, but the rider or the telemetry considers that the right solution would be another…It almost never happens. Telemetry shows what is happening with the bike, not the solution. The important thing is to know how to interpret what it is saying. The good thing about telemetry is that it helps you to understand what the rider is telling you. A clear example is when the bike moves-up; this could be due to the rear suspension being too hard, not getting down and having the effect of a hinge. But it could also mean that the suspension is too soft, gets completely down and once it is down makes the bike move up. The rider tells you that the bike moves-up but telemetry will show you how the suspension is working and youll be able to solve the problem. The fact of being a pillar of the official Honda team, with the demand of results involved, does it mean excessive pressure or is it like the icing on the cake in your professional career?It is with no doubt the highest you can expect, being Chief Mechanic of Hondas number one rider. Right now there isn’t a factory capable of topping Honda. There is obviously more pressure, but not much more. In a satellite team, youre conscious about your limitations and the teams and riders… but you always try to give the best. A rider that is not doing very well often means more work than a rider doing well; the one doing well means less work because you know how it works and there isnt much to do. The problem arrives when you have riders with huge problems making them do very badly. Sometimes you have more work with a rider finishing tenth that with a winning rider. The season I remember having less to do was 2002, the last four races with the four-stroke; we didnt do much then. We won two races and finished once second and once third. Valentino wasnt used to work because he didnt need to, so after the first race we won in Motegi they had to put their skates on to find the base we had found in only one race. They were always a bit behind us; Rossi changed the engine type twice, in only four races! A brief valuation of the most direct challengers, for example Biaggi.Max is a guy with a lot of experience; you cannot leave him out, always take him into account, even if regularity is not one of his virtues. There are practices where he qualifies twelfth but then he ends up winning the race. And Gibernau?Hes a great rider and very consistent; he had been constantly on the podium until a couple of races ago. But I dont know whether the last results have affected him morally. The race in Assen, the two crashes when he was fighting for the leadership of the Championship, equalled in points with his highest rival… He seemed to be very strong, but well see what happens from now on. What can you tell me about Rossi?I think that Rossi is currently the best rider of the World Championship. Hes the reference. The point is that the bike is very important in this Championship, maybe not as important as in car racing, but it is. On the other hand, circuits that were theoretically more favourable for Yamaha, such as Le Mans, arent anymore and vice versa. I thought that in Italy, a track with slow corners and especially in Montmeló, it would be harder for them to be at the level of their challengers, but… Its obvious that Rossi will always be a title candidate, because he is a rider who has always won and is used to it; hes had the best bike in all the classes. This year he took a risk. He said he knew that the first year would be difficult but I dont know him enough to know if he really knew and if he was conscious about how things were. Its Valentino Rossi. I mean, you always have to count on him, he isnt the World Champion without a reason, but I dont now if the latest results might have affected him and the team. And Barros teammate, Nicky Hayden?He had a bad start of the season, with highs and lows but hes doing great now. He does good qualifying and he has progressed a lot in the races. Hes just had two consecutive podium finishes! As you already said, at the start of the season people used to talk about Yamaha circuits and Honda circuits, but the results have been contradictory. Do you think that the tradition will continue to be broken? What do you think will happen on the next circuits?Sachsenring was theoretically a Yamaha circuit, because their frame is much more agile, but Honda took the three steps of the podium… From what we are seeing this year, the Yamaha or Honda circuit thing is behind the times, although there are many left. Donington, for example, is rather a Honda circuit, because it is a much more stable bike and on the other hand Brno has always been better for Yamaha. But it is really difficult to say. Do you think that Hondas results of this weekend will mean an inflection point?I think so. We had very bad luck in four races, and Im sure that these results will allow us to break these dynamics. We were good at practices but we didnt get good race results. In Mugello they stopped the race due to rain, and that was bad for us, crash in Barcelona and Assen, disastrous race in Brazil… Here the practices went well, as did the race. How did you see Alex in this last Grand Prix?Look, bad results and injuries undermine your morale, especially if its due to bad luck. But I saw him very well this weekend and the final result helped him a lot. He needed it to believe that good results in qualifying turn into good race results. This is what I meant with breaking dynamics. Proof is that after the race he was happy but not completely, he seemed a bit upset because of finishing second and not winning. Its been the first time he has seen himself as a winner and that is very important. Do you still consider it feasible to fight for the Championship title?The lead of the Championship has become tighter after the last two GPs, but thats not the way to think. We dont have to think about winning the Championship. What we have to do is to think about winning races. It is very difficult for us to win all the races left and for the others to have only bad results, but we have to keep on working to continue improving the bike and try to win races. The working line is good, Alex is confident and very happy with the bike. Although, as I said, there is no perfect bike and Im sure that well have some problems, but the path were following is the right one.
