Ten Minutes With... Davide Brivio

From working with Yamaha and Rossi, to Rins and managing the new-era Suzuki GP squad, he’s been through it all – but how hard is it to run a team at the highest level of racing?

- Carlos

From looking after Rossi’s glory days at Yamaha to bringing wins back to the Suzuki Factory, Davide Brivio has done the lot. The man has seen, sorted and been through it all, but sitting down with him over a cup of coffee, the first item on the agenda though, was to find out about the Suzuki squad. I mean, did he really believe when Suzuki came back into the GP paddock that they’d be back up the sharp end so quickly, and what was the biggest learning curve? “I mean, yeah, honestly when we started this project, for me it was the first time involved with Suzuki, we didn’t really have a plan or experience to have an expectation to be competitive or win a race – we just started, kept going and tried to do the best we could. I remember the first year, it was only the sixth or seventh race at Barcelona, in qualifying when we were first and second. That was a big achievement! It was really nice, and the first taste of success. We had a small advantage at the time as we could use a soft tyre, but it was still good. The racing was always more difficult, but the year after we won our first race, and got three podiums as well, it was incredible. As far as a learning curve goes, in this project, I would say it’s the importance of the staff members – not just the racers, but everyone behind the scenes. From engineers at the factory to everyone doing the job on a race weekend, that’s what makes a huge difference. To manage the team, the material, the setup, and to look after the riders, is an incredibly fine line. To make the right choices is incredibly difficult, but very exciting because everyone needs to work together.”