Long ago ACE I had requested an interview with Alberto Puig and it has arrived at the San Marino GP. The team manger of the Repsol Honda He has had some health problems this season, but now he looks good and feels strong enough to get his riders next year to have a better Honda than the current one, which he acknowledges is not at the level. As for your pilots, maintains confidence in Pol and is seen to be in love with a Márquez who he sees suffering closely, because he is still with the handicap of his arm injury.
-Talking with Pol, he tells me that journalists have a hostile image of you, different from how it really is. Which is what he wants to convey to us, but which is not the case. That’s right?
-I do not know. I do not intend to transmit anything. What I intend is not to transmit anything, to be who I am.
-Do you have an image for the media and another for your pilots?
-I don’t work with the media but with my pilots. If I have something, I try to give it to my pilots, not the media. Now I can try to answer a series of questions, but I can do little more for you.
-Do you understand that Honda and its riders have fans and that the media act as a bridge between them?
-No, I do not understand. I can understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think it’s completely like that and, in the end, when you’re in here I think that a person in my position all they have to look for is to try to help their pilots and manage what they have to manage. internally in the team. If you get that, you have already achieved a lot, because it is very difficult and I am not a person who wants to please everyone. I try to be in my work zone, to do the best I know or can and a series of other factors that I consider are not so important to me because I do not contemplate them so much, to say the least.
-How do you assess that management? The results have not been good for a long time, although with Marc’s recovery they are beginning to come.
-The operation of a team or the management depends in the end only on one thing, which are the results. If you look at it from that point of view, we are not making results, that is evident.
-So, according to your speech, the management is not good, is it?
-Well, if you look at it like that, if one has to carry the full weight of everything that happens, obviously, things are not working out. Now, if you start to analyze why, we have a rider who has had a major injury, our bike is still not in place. There are many things.
-I like to go beyond the results. There are times when it is better to lose doing it well than winning badly, as for example, the second the other day of Marc in Alcañiz.
-We saw last week as a victory.
-I understand you, because what Marc did was tremendous. But tell me why in a year in which there was freezing of engines and aerodynamics, the Ducati is better and it is a motorcycle for all audiences and the Honda is not.
-Well I do not know. We always work to improve the bike, but what you say is like that. Today, our bike is not at the level we would like. That the Ducati is a motorcycle for all audiences, it could be, but when you make a statement like that, I think that taking the present is not what you touch. You have to take a higher rank. For all audiences it is probably the Honda and the Yamaha, because they are the bikes that have won the most in this championship. If you say that at this precise moment the Ducati is a motorcycle for everyone, it may be so, but this company has not been around for five minutes nor is it going to stop in five minutes. When you take a trajectory of an important range, because the bike has worked and it has worked for many riders. That occasionally our motorcycle is not one hundred percent, yes. That Márquez wasn’t there last year and we couldn’t develop the bike with him, too. Things do not happen just because, they happen for something. There are a series of conditioning factors that have come together and that lead us to what results we do not have now.
-That is why Honda is considered the best factory in the championship, by track record and by means of getting ahead of this situation. What is wrong with this bike and how should next year be?
-Those are technical details. We have to improve things.
-Can you be more specific?
-I will be abstract, but I will not deny that we have to improve. We could turn our heads saying that since Marc is not well … But no. We have to improve the bike. We have four riders and, apart from Marc being injured, the others are not getting the results either. It is evident that it is necessary to improve. We have been able to locate our weak points, which is important for both a doctor and a manufacturer. Diagnosis is everything to fix or repair. We believe that we have it and now we have to apply the treatment to solve it.
-Is the goal for all your drivers to be competitive?
-Yeah right. Obviously, our spearhead is the rider who has won the most, which is Marc, but we don’t just have him. There are also Pol, Álex and Nakgami and the goal is to make a more universal motorcycle.
-Is renewing Marc for four years your greatest achievement? With this they left the competition out of place.
-I would not understand it so much as a maneuver to dislodge others. It is something that arises between two, between the pilot and the company. You see that there is harmony, that there are many years behind, many victories and hardships. There is a relationship and it arises because yes, not forced. Both Marc and Honda are very happy to be able to extend this situation. Then things went wrong, because he had this accident and we could not develop the bike as we would have liked. Now we are clearly below what we thought at the time, which does not mean that we think that this is going to be eternal. On the contrary. The group is strong, it is a group of war, of battle. Marc is a winning rider and Honda is a company that in the face of adversity has always sought technical solutions. If it doesn’t go well here, there. If it doesn’t go well at the top, at the bottom. That is the situation.
-What was the hardest thing in the desert crossing without Marc, the absence of good results for Honda or the uncertainty of knowing if he would return and how he would return?
-It’s a bit of everything, and also not being able to develop your bike as you want. That is a very, very issue … To make a motorcycle, you need a person on top who takes it to the limit, who understands it and who gives you ‘inputs’, especially the engineers. It is a combination of everything, but really, when you think about it and analyze it coldly, I personally, who have been a pilot and have been very annoyed, the worst of all is to understand that you have a great champion, who could win and is not winning because of the physical situation that he has and that he is suffering from not doing what he likes, which is running. That is the most painful and the saddest thing in history, for me, and at Honda they have felt bad to see that Marc could not develop his dream, which is to race.
– Do you think that he will be the one he was or that he will not be necessary and that a new Marc will be just as competitive?
-I think he will come back, well, no, I’m sure he will go back to being who he was. In fact, a person who wins a GP and finishes second the other day … Not that many people can do this. And he is doing it with a certain handicap. He will go back to being who he was, but it is also true that for him it is being very hard and he is being brave to endure and resist in a completely surreal situation for him. There are drivers who are great drivers, but who have not reached that level of victories and championships. When you are used to winning, winning, winning and winning again, as I said I don’t know who, and you can’t even run, being away for so long, it is not the same for someone who is used to that as for someone who is not. The impact that he has suffered with all this is quite great, but even so he is resisting and trying to overcome the issue. And it has already.
-Do you notice that your rivals want you?
-I don’t know, but if it were like that for me it would not be very smart on the part of those pilots, because I don’t think there are people there who think that Marc is not going to be fast again. They are simply trying to seize their moment, which is what anyone would do.
-Tell me about Pol.
-When we took Pol, we did it with the clear idea that he is a champion, an experienced uncle, a brave man and to be ahead. Things have not turned out as we thought, it’s true. At the moment he has not been able to adapt to what the motorcycle is. We think you are going to do it and we will help you with it. We are going to try to do what he needs, because we continue to think that Espargaró is a very fast, brave rider and that he does not hide. He always shows his face and that is very important to me. When it doesn’t go well, it doesn’t go well. What we want is for it to succeed here. That’s what we caught him for.
-What the hell did he say to you in that emotional talk that earned him pole position?
-Was nothing.
-He said that thanks to it he got pole.
-No man no. No way.
– Is it to raise the voice to the pilots?
-No, no, really not.
-How was the reunion the other day with Jorge Lorenzo in Alcañiz?
-Very well. I really liked that he came to see us and say hello. He was very affectionate and I saw him very well, enjoying life.
-Finally, how is your health?
-Do you think this matters to people?
-Even if you may not believe it, there are people who are fond of him and who worry when he misses a race.
-I have had a little problem this year, but I hope I can solve it soon.
-I see him good, especially because I have seen him much worse, like at Le Mans this year.
-Yes, but let’s see if I get better.
-Thanks for your time. It has been interesting. I like that from Honda they recognize that they have not done things well.
– I recognize it, that I am the captain of the boat, and it is only right that I speak the truth.
