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MotoGP
MOTOGP: Noyes’ Notebook - One-On-One With HRC Boss Shuhei Nakamoto
Honda's MotoGP boss, Shuhei Nakamoto, is one of the two primary figures in the series' looming 'Cuban Missile Crisis.' He spoke with Dennis Noyes about the future of the sport.
HRC's MotoGP racing boss Shuhei Nakamoto (Photo: Honda Pro Images)
Over the summer tension has been building as the two most powerful men in professional motorcycle roadracing have carried on their debate at two levels, one very private in one-on-one meetings and the other very public in a series of interviews in the specialist press.
Carmelo Ezpeleta has stated in recent interviews that, unless the MSMA offers an acceptable alternative plan, he will use his authority as CEO of Dorna Sports, rights holder of the FIM Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix, to impose new regulations that will reduce costs and improve the 'show' in the premier MotoGP class.
Shuhei Nakamoto, Vice President of HRC and racing boss of the Repsol Honda MotoGP effort, was reluctant at first to be drawn in to a battle of interviews, but by midsummer he was being quoted as saying that if Dorna unilaterally imposed a single ECU and rev limit for 2014, Honda would leave MotoGP for either World Superbike or the All-Japan Championship in order to carry out the technical development that, according to Nakamoto, is Honda's principal reason for racing at all.
There have been various deadlines and lines in the sand drawn and then withdrawn, but Ezpeleta has consistently said that if the MSMA (the racing manufacturers association that has shrunken to only three factories: Honda, Yamaha and Ducati) does not make a viable counterproposal to his own proposals by the end of the season, Dorna will put forward a package of technical rules with support from the FIM, the international federation, and IRTA, the racing teams association.
I requested this interview with Nakamoto a month in advance, timing it for the Malaysian Grand Prix, just a week after the Japanese Grand Prix in Motegi, because I believed that by that time, October 19, some compromise would have been reached and the peace pipe would be lit.
Clearly this was not yet the case, although both Ezpeleta and Nakamoto seem to be have softened their rhetoric if not their positions as we move closer to the final race of the 2012 season in Valencia.
It may have only been coincidence or serendipity that Bridgepoint, owners not only of Dorna but also of InFront Motor Sports, promoters of the World Superbike Championship, decided just prior to the final round of the Superbike championship in Magny-Cours, France, to announce that InFront had bought the remaining 7% of the Superbike series still owned by the Flammini brothers and placed both championships under the control of Dorna and Ezpeleta.
This move seems to have defused the Honda threat to take their development to World Superbike because, although the '13 SBK season will run under existing rules, there will most assuredly be tighter and more limiting rules imposed in the World Superbike Championship in 2014.
The atmosphere was tense, especially at the beginning of this interview. Nakamoto feels that he has been quoted out of context by European journalists, but he stood completely behind his recent interview with Japanese journalist Yoko Togashi and I used that as a guide to Honda's position.
As a journalist who has been covering Grand Prix racing now for nearly forty years, the current standoff between Dorna and Honda seems to me to be a sort of Cuban Missile Crisis moment and I am not yet sure who is Kennedy and who is Khrushchev.
The Honda spirit as it was handed down from Soichiro Honda, the founder, and the brilliant engineer, Soichiro Irimajiri, to succeeding generations via the leadership of the legendary Youichi Ogama and, among others, Takeo Fukui, Suguru Kanazawa, Satoru Horike, Masuni Humane and now, Shuhei Nakamoto, is still strong. Even in today’s economy, Honda defends development of new technology and calls the imposition of a standard ECU and a rev limit “crazy changes.”
Mr. Nakamoto is usually seen smiling and joking in the paddock, but dead serious whenever he is glimpsed in the Repsol Honda pit during practice or races. I have often spoken with him in the relaxed evening atmosphere of the paddock, but when I reported punctually for the scheduled one-on-one interview at 1:00pm in the HRC office back of the team garage in Sepang, I was expecting exactly what I encountered -- a dead serious and outspoken race boss with his raceface on.
Carmelo Ezpeleta has stated in recent interviews that, unless the MSMA offers an acceptable alternative plan, he will use his authority as CEO of Dorna Sports, rights holder of the FIM Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix, to impose new regulations that will reduce costs and improve the 'show' in the premier MotoGP class.
Shuhei Nakamoto, Vice President of HRC and racing boss of the Repsol Honda MotoGP effort, was reluctant at first to be drawn in to a battle of interviews, but by midsummer he was being quoted as saying that if Dorna unilaterally imposed a single ECU and rev limit for 2014, Honda would leave MotoGP for either World Superbike or the All-Japan Championship in order to carry out the technical development that, according to Nakamoto, is Honda's principal reason for racing at all.
There have been various deadlines and lines in the sand drawn and then withdrawn, but Ezpeleta has consistently said that if the MSMA (the racing manufacturers association that has shrunken to only three factories: Honda, Yamaha and Ducati) does not make a viable counterproposal to his own proposals by the end of the season, Dorna will put forward a package of technical rules with support from the FIM, the international federation, and IRTA, the racing teams association.
I requested this interview with Nakamoto a month in advance, timing it for the Malaysian Grand Prix, just a week after the Japanese Grand Prix in Motegi, because I believed that by that time, October 19, some compromise would have been reached and the peace pipe would be lit.
Clearly this was not yet the case, although both Ezpeleta and Nakamoto seem to be have softened their rhetoric if not their positions as we move closer to the final race of the 2012 season in Valencia.
It may have only been coincidence or serendipity that Bridgepoint, owners not only of Dorna but also of InFront Motor Sports, promoters of the World Superbike Championship, decided just prior to the final round of the Superbike championship in Magny-Cours, France, to announce that InFront had bought the remaining 7% of the Superbike series still owned by the Flammini brothers and placed both championships under the control of Dorna and Ezpeleta.
This move seems to have defused the Honda threat to take their development to World Superbike because, although the '13 SBK season will run under existing rules, there will most assuredly be tighter and more limiting rules imposed in the World Superbike Championship in 2014.
The atmosphere was tense, especially at the beginning of this interview. Nakamoto feels that he has been quoted out of context by European journalists, but he stood completely behind his recent interview with Japanese journalist Yoko Togashi and I used that as a guide to Honda's position.
As a journalist who has been covering Grand Prix racing now for nearly forty years, the current standoff between Dorna and Honda seems to me to be a sort of Cuban Missile Crisis moment and I am not yet sure who is Kennedy and who is Khrushchev.
The Honda spirit as it was handed down from Soichiro Honda, the founder, and the brilliant engineer, Soichiro Irimajiri, to succeeding generations via the leadership of the legendary Youichi Ogama and, among others, Takeo Fukui, Suguru Kanazawa, Satoru Horike, Masuni Humane and now, Shuhei Nakamoto, is still strong. Even in today’s economy, Honda defends development of new technology and calls the imposition of a standard ECU and a rev limit “crazy changes.”
Mr. Nakamoto is usually seen smiling and joking in the paddock, but dead serious whenever he is glimpsed in the Repsol Honda pit during practice or races. I have often spoken with him in the relaxed evening atmosphere of the paddock, but when I reported punctually for the scheduled one-on-one interview at 1:00pm in the HRC office back of the team garage in Sepang, I was expecting exactly what I encountered -- a dead serious and outspoken race boss with his raceface on.
Grand Prix of The France
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