Joined Oct 2007
4K Posts | 744+
Tuscany, Italy
Nice interview with Burgess on GPOne:
Burgess: "Ducati will listen to Rossi"
by Ernesto Emmi
As we first reported way back on September 21st, Jeremy Burgess will continue working with Valentino Rossi in 2011. The Australian crew chief, who will move to Ducati with the rest of the team, spoke about next year's challenge during the Phillip Island race weekend.
"It’s going to be a great challenge and after 31 years with Japanese companies it’s going to be really good to have the opportunity and to do it together with Valentino will be very special - Burgess said - Everybody on out team is of such high quality in their field, there’s no issue with having them stay here at Yamaha if they want to stay here. Again, so many of us came with Valentino and worked together before and Brent (Stephens) and Matteo (Flamigni), who are the two guys who were at Yamaha when we arrived, are now also making the move to Ducati. So at the end of it all everybody had to look at their own situation. So, everybody seems to be happy. Ducati are very happy to have us on board. And when we finally get to sort of, able to work with the bike, after our current term expires with Yamaha, it’s going to be quite good. The Ducati is a lot closer, I believe, than we were seven years ago. OK, times are different. I’m aware of that. the Hondas are going to be very, very strong. And I believe racing is cyclic. I think Yamaha possibly could be in a position it’s getting towards the end of its so-called dominance. It’ll be very strong for a couple of years. Honda I know are going to come back and we’ve seen that with hiring Casey. We’ve seen that with the engineers they’ve taken from us. From the testing point of view, I think we’ll be fine. We don’t have a tire issue, because they’re all the same. Most of the components on the bikes these days are sourced; suspensions and what have you. Experienced, reasonably experienced crew, reasonably experienced rider. The important thing, the main important thing, is Valentino gets his shoulder back to full fitness so that when we come out next year in Qatar we’ve got all guns blazing. Two or three things can happen at Valencia. A, he’s not 100% fit, so is it a fair test? Two, it could be raining for two days after Valencia, anyway. And in most sporting endeavors, and I do still consider motorcycling to be somewhat sporting, if you’re athlete isn’t at full fitness, you can’t expect to win. So you’ve got to be at full fitness first. At least if he’s fit when we come back in Sepang in the early part of February, we’ll get really good quality testing.”
Some are concerned about the vast differences between the Yamaha and Ducati, but not JB.
"It’s pretty clear, and I pointed out to Valentino, that he won’t be riding a Yamaha anymore, so there’s no point in trying to make it like his Yamaha. It will be a Ducati. He likes a bike that has grip and that would be front and rear. But you have to maximize the package, but I can see that Casey and Nicky run quite different settings on the bike, just from observations of the geometry on the bike. I can watch some of these lesser riders on the Ducatis and you can see that the bikes are, in my opinion, unsuitably set for what they want to try and do with them. I’m not saying anybody’s doing a bad job. I see these things wobbling around. When I think, clearly, if we had that issue with Valentino it’d be fixed in 80 seconds, but some riders don’t like the hardness of the bike, because they don’t get the feel. But then when they’re riding around and it’s too soft they’re not going forward either. So you’ve got to be able to create the feel with the hardness to avoid all that sloppiness. I don’t think there are any issues in the bike that are a big worry to me. I think the bike is just a tool to do your job. You sharpen the tool at the race track, you don’t build it. you should be able to adjust it to what Valentino wants.”
The key question is whether Ducati will be able to respond to Rossi's needs that way that Yamaha has been able to?
"It’s about prioritizing things in a way such that Valentino will have a direct link to Filippo (Preziosi). Filippo is then in a position to direct his engineering group. If the engineering group were working on another problem that we had and they’re a week away from completing that, he can pull that first project up and say, ‘no, no, no this has suddenly become more important—get on this first.’ And I think that’s pretty much what we’ve had with (Masao) Furusawa. Rather than going from the bottom up, through the network here of the engineering group through the various different departments and then putting it on the list to get fixed, we’ve had a man there that could basically tell the engineers that they can ‘stop project A because project B has suddenly become more important. And you’ll go back to project A when you’ve project B tidied up or if we don’t have anything coming along.’ And I would like to hope that Filippo will be sort of commanding the ship from right there. I know that Valentino will be picking the phone up fairly regularly, if not every night. And I’m sure that’s what Filippo would like to hear. And you’re dealing with Valentino Rossi. You’re not dealing with somebody you’re not sure of. What I said to Yamaha when I came here, I said, ‘I can’t fix your bike. But if you listen to Valentino Rossi, we’ll go forward. Ignore him at your peril.’ And it’s the same deal here at Ducati. They spent the money to get him. If you don’t want to listen to him, well why did you spend the money?”
http://www.gpone.com/index.php/en/slider/2231-burgess-qla-ducati-ascoltera-rossiq.html
Burgess: "Ducati will listen to Rossi"
by Ernesto Emmi
As we first reported way back on September 21st, Jeremy Burgess will continue working with Valentino Rossi in 2011. The Australian crew chief, who will move to Ducati with the rest of the team, spoke about next year's challenge during the Phillip Island race weekend.
"It’s going to be a great challenge and after 31 years with Japanese companies it’s going to be really good to have the opportunity and to do it together with Valentino will be very special - Burgess said - Everybody on out team is of such high quality in their field, there’s no issue with having them stay here at Yamaha if they want to stay here. Again, so many of us came with Valentino and worked together before and Brent (Stephens) and Matteo (Flamigni), who are the two guys who were at Yamaha when we arrived, are now also making the move to Ducati. So at the end of it all everybody had to look at their own situation. So, everybody seems to be happy. Ducati are very happy to have us on board. And when we finally get to sort of, able to work with the bike, after our current term expires with Yamaha, it’s going to be quite good. The Ducati is a lot closer, I believe, than we were seven years ago. OK, times are different. I’m aware of that. the Hondas are going to be very, very strong. And I believe racing is cyclic. I think Yamaha possibly could be in a position it’s getting towards the end of its so-called dominance. It’ll be very strong for a couple of years. Honda I know are going to come back and we’ve seen that with hiring Casey. We’ve seen that with the engineers they’ve taken from us. From the testing point of view, I think we’ll be fine. We don’t have a tire issue, because they’re all the same. Most of the components on the bikes these days are sourced; suspensions and what have you. Experienced, reasonably experienced crew, reasonably experienced rider. The important thing, the main important thing, is Valentino gets his shoulder back to full fitness so that when we come out next year in Qatar we’ve got all guns blazing. Two or three things can happen at Valencia. A, he’s not 100% fit, so is it a fair test? Two, it could be raining for two days after Valencia, anyway. And in most sporting endeavors, and I do still consider motorcycling to be somewhat sporting, if you’re athlete isn’t at full fitness, you can’t expect to win. So you’ve got to be at full fitness first. At least if he’s fit when we come back in Sepang in the early part of February, we’ll get really good quality testing.”
Some are concerned about the vast differences between the Yamaha and Ducati, but not JB.
"It’s pretty clear, and I pointed out to Valentino, that he won’t be riding a Yamaha anymore, so there’s no point in trying to make it like his Yamaha. It will be a Ducati. He likes a bike that has grip and that would be front and rear. But you have to maximize the package, but I can see that Casey and Nicky run quite different settings on the bike, just from observations of the geometry on the bike. I can watch some of these lesser riders on the Ducatis and you can see that the bikes are, in my opinion, unsuitably set for what they want to try and do with them. I’m not saying anybody’s doing a bad job. I see these things wobbling around. When I think, clearly, if we had that issue with Valentino it’d be fixed in 80 seconds, but some riders don’t like the hardness of the bike, because they don’t get the feel. But then when they’re riding around and it’s too soft they’re not going forward either. So you’ve got to be able to create the feel with the hardness to avoid all that sloppiness. I don’t think there are any issues in the bike that are a big worry to me. I think the bike is just a tool to do your job. You sharpen the tool at the race track, you don’t build it. you should be able to adjust it to what Valentino wants.”
The key question is whether Ducati will be able to respond to Rossi's needs that way that Yamaha has been able to?
"It’s about prioritizing things in a way such that Valentino will have a direct link to Filippo (Preziosi). Filippo is then in a position to direct his engineering group. If the engineering group were working on another problem that we had and they’re a week away from completing that, he can pull that first project up and say, ‘no, no, no this has suddenly become more important—get on this first.’ And I think that’s pretty much what we’ve had with (Masao) Furusawa. Rather than going from the bottom up, through the network here of the engineering group through the various different departments and then putting it on the list to get fixed, we’ve had a man there that could basically tell the engineers that they can ‘stop project A because project B has suddenly become more important. And you’ll go back to project A when you’ve project B tidied up or if we don’t have anything coming along.’ And I would like to hope that Filippo will be sort of commanding the ship from right there. I know that Valentino will be picking the phone up fairly regularly, if not every night. And I’m sure that’s what Filippo would like to hear. And you’re dealing with Valentino Rossi. You’re not dealing with somebody you’re not sure of. What I said to Yamaha when I came here, I said, ‘I can’t fix your bike. But if you listen to Valentino Rossi, we’ll go forward. Ignore him at your peril.’ And it’s the same deal here at Ducati. They spent the money to get him. If you don’t want to listen to him, well why did you spend the money?”
http://www.gpone.com/index.php/en/slider/2231-burgess-qla-ducati-ascoltera-rossiq.html
