Livio Suppo was with Ducati for over eleven years and followed Ducati’s MotoGP project since its origins along with Claudio Domenicalli and the great Filippo Preziosi, and for seven years he was Ducati’s point man making not so easy decisions and taking the flack when things didn’t always go well especially this season with Casey Stoner’s mysterious illness and three race pullout.

Suppo decided to move on and will be Honda this year, not as a team or project manager the role he had in Ducati, but his job will be to find new sponsors for the Japanese team.

Website moto.it has a very long and comprehensive interview (also audio, but in Italian) with Suppo and we’ve decided to translate some of the most interesting parts. The Italian manager touches a lot of bases, Ducati’s MotoGP project, to the 2003 negotiations with Valentino Rossi, the decision to send Troy Bayliss away, the other riders who’ve ridden the Desmosedici, Casey Stoner and Stoner’s 2009 season.

The public debut of the Ducati GP was in Valencia at the end of 2002, but the real test was at Phillip Island a few months later, and the test was such a success that Borgo Panigale decided to cheat on the lap times declaring them higher than they really were.

“Back then you could test whenever you wanted, even by yourself, it was an important opportunity that we miss today due to economic reasons and now each practice session becomes a sort of mini GP where the riders are more concerned about times than setting up their bikes. Getting back to us, we went to Australia in December 2002 and Capirossi did a race simulation, and to be honest we were already using the Michelin 2003 version, and we were much faster than Rossi when he won the race just a few months before. So we decided to say that the lap times were slightly higher: because even we were a bit surprised. I think Loris (Capirossi), who signed with us, took a big risk, because the Desmosedici was really born from scratch with no racing experience and Loris probably drew a big sigh of relief.”

The year of the debut, in 2003, was an extraordinary year, with nine podium finishes, including a victory in Barcelona, but in 2004 the Ducati met a lot of unexpected problems.

“It was a tough year, especially because we came from a great first season and debuting like we did was wonderful, but it was also a sort of rip off, because the first year we were fourth in the world championship with Loris and second in the constructors championship, shaming a company like Yamaha who was in series for such a long time. Our expectations were really high, however we really suffered a lot when they changed the front tire sizes from 17” to 16.5” and turning around a season that’s already started isn’t easy, but in the end it didn’t go so bad, we got two podiums and several placements while other factories struggled. In 2003, for example Yamaha got one podium and that was during a race that was interrupted by rain and Suzuki got only one and that was in the last two years.

“Of course, if we compare it with 2003, when we were always competitive, it was merciless. For me in particular, 2005 was perhaps more challenging because of my decision to switch to Bridgestone tires and there were some particularly difficult times. I had a kind of illumination during Monday testing following the Portuguese GP at Estoril. At that time, we were negotiating with Gibernau and it was supposed to be absolutely hush hush, but when when we got to Portugal, we saw Sete on the cover of a Spanish weekly dressed in Ducati colours. Well, someone had spilled the beans and it also mentioned some really crazy salary figure like seven million dollars, Gibernau was asking for a lot of money at that time but it was nowhere near that amount.”

“My reasoning was, there’s a rider like Rossi, who wins 11-12 races a year, then there’s Gibernau, who wins four, but who wants a lot of money and then there‘s a certain Tamada, who comes from the Japanese Superbike Championship and never won, but he took second place behind Rossi at Estoril. This in my view, meant that Bridgestone was already better than Michelin and to use them you could be a “human” and not Valentino. I do have to say that obviously that these tires, at least on some circuits, were very competitive. At that time we had yet to get on the podium and if we continued like that we could seriously lose our sponsors and for Ducati sponsors are essential and if you don’t get results you’re in trouble finding and keeping them.. “

“I started talking to Claudio and Filippo about it, and they were at first and quite rightly so, concerned, because from the technical point of view you had to be crazy to switch from Michelin to Bridgestone, but from a management point of view it made more sense. Ducati’s engineers started checking and analyzing Bridgestone’s performances and see if they were actually performing better. Checking out the numbers we noticed that the performance of the Japanese was competitively growing, but they had big problems on tracks with a very low friction rates. We started taking to them and we knew they wanted to improve, but they didn’t have any strong riders and Tamada or someone like him, had decided to switch over to Michelin and since we needed them and they needed us, the deal went easily through. In short, it was a marriage of convenience for both of us. We were able to diversify and we were back to winning races in 2005.”

In 2003 before Valentino Rossi was contacted by Yamaha he headed over to Borgo Panigale because he was attracted by the Italian dream: an Italian rider on an Italian motorcycle. Suppo doesn’t tell all about those negotiations, but did say:

“The only real negotiations with Rossi was in 2003. In the period it was clear that Valentino was very strong, but for most people it was because he had the best bike and team. In other words, everyone was convinced he was strong, but not as strong as he would later show them and that today very few people acknowledge.”

“Many were convinced that when he switched to Yamaha it was a too big of a gamble and that he would end up eating dirt because in those days the M1 was known as a difficult bike and it didn’t give riders any confidence. But the truth was that Rossi was very, very strong and he knew it, because in those years with a super competitive Honda he didn’t show his true potential, because he was more interested in having fun, never revealing that he could have easily lapped everyone with no problems at all. So he dramatized, lapping a second faster than his rivals on the last lap, showing off that he was so great on worn out tires. To tell the truth he was so talented that he could have lapped a second faster on every lap of the race, but he was intelligent enough to realize that if he did that, the racing would have been boring, so while he was making his rivals important, he too was becoming stronger.”

“We did negotiate with Rossi and from our point of view we wanted him, but it wasn’t easy because we already had contracts with Capirossi and Bayliss in 2004 and we would have had to build an official third bike for Troy, we liked the idea but unfortunately for us Valentino chose otherwise. There’s never a single reason why things don’t happen; the economic aspect counted, how you feel around the people you have to work with and above all the idea that Rossi wanted to try to win with a bike that in that period was considered a nail. Simply, Rossi could make a bigger impact with Yamaha than with Ducati and strangely enough Ducati’s competitive season in 2003 was more negative in finding a possible agreement with Rossi.”

Another difficult moment was at the end of 2004 when Ducati decided to send away Troy Bayliss, an emblem for Ducatisti and replace him with Carlos Checa. It was a company choice, but the blame fell on Suppo.

“It’s normal considering the role that I covered, honors and burdens. To tell the truth we already asked Troy to return to our SBK team, because except for that special day at Valencia in 2006, like it or not Bayliss always struggled in MotoGP. After a disastrous year with Honda he agreed to return to SBK’s and finished his career as a super hero, winning the last two seasons. If we compared Capirossi and Bayliss in 2003 and 2004 the comparison was merciless. Since we loved him, continuing would have been negative for both him and us. For some reason he felt the pressure and was obsessed with the idea that he was already old and had to hurry, but then raced until he was 39, maybe if he stayed more calm he would have had more results in MotoGP.”

On other Ducati riders:

“To tell the truth no other rider surprised me positively. Let’s start with Checa. We wanted Checa because he had a lot of experience and was great Ducati fan, and this is an important aspect in a rider for finding motivation. Maybe we make a mistake in sending away Carlos because in the last races in 2005 he got two podiums and was improving, with hindsight we should have kept him, but Gibernau statistically looked stronger but he was very unfortunate in Ducati. In Jerez in 2006 we had the bike and tires to win and in the end Capirossi crossed the finish line first. I think that if Gibernau could have fought it out with Capirossi and won at his debut with Ducati his season would have different, instead a stupid gear shifter broke and I remember that day, Sete was like a broken man, he felt like a cartoon character and when you feel like that your performance suffers, add the horrific accident at Barcelona, no matter whose fault it was, and that ended his career, because his injured should never properly healed again.”

“Hayden did what we expected him to do and we managed to bring him to the point where he could fight for the positions behind the Magnificent Four. He helped us understand that we had to make the bike easier, unfortunately we took a long time, but he really believed in us and never gave up and that quality was the reason we renewed with him in 2010.”

“Melandri was clearly a huge disappointment and I think that in the history of motorcycles, there has rarely been a combination that theoretically could have work so well, but in reality worked out so badly. Sure there were responsibilities on both sides, but on the same bike, Toni Elias got two podiums, compared to a fifth place in China which was Marco’s best result. It looked like he was going to catch Stoner and he seemed reborn, but after that race it was like a curtain fell over him again and how that’s possible I really don’t know! In 2006, Marco was racing a Honda on Michelin tires, just like Casey and he beat him in Turkey, after a superb race, and end of the season he had a lot more points. In 2007, Melandri had to stay with Gresini and we got Stoner, who dominated the championship. Marco was probably convinced that with that bike he would have easily won the title, probably underestimating the value of Casey, who is an absolute phenomenon, even if for one reason or another, many didn’t realize it till much later.”

Suppo reveals that he wanted Stoner in 2005:

“I always say that the biggest mistake I made in my career at Ducati was not to have picked up Casey at the end of 2005. We had talked to his dad in Brno, but we were nervous of taking a rookie and giving him our bike, because our bikes even then were considered the most difficult to handle and ride than the others. At that time it wasn’t clear that a kid coming from the 250cc class could be fast straight away with the 1000cc. It was still the period of the veteran riders like Biaggi, Barros and Gibernau, all riders over 30. In the end we thought it would be safer to bet on a certain talent like Sete, who was a twice runner up in the championship. We made a mistake, because I believe that Casey could have won the title in 2006. I really liked him when he was in 250 and in all of the first races of the 2006 season but by that time he was getting noticed by everyone and I talked to Colin (Casey’s dad) at Donington when he seemed to be very close to signing with Yamaha. In 2007 there would have been the rule change with the switch from the 990’s to the 800cc and a rider would have been safer in a big company like Yamaha. The second part of the season was much less positive for Casey and at the end we were both lucky, because he didn’t have a ride and we didn’t have a rider.”

Suppo clarifies also Stoner’s 2007 contract that many considered quite low:

“It’s a legend, because Casey from the begining had a fixed salary with bonuses and since he went very well, his end of the year paycheck was similar to other riders who win. It’s true however, that his fixed salary was probably less than most of other top riders.”

Stoner’s mystery disease that kept him out of three races:

“It was a very delicate and difficult situation to handle because you become fond and attached to your riders and seeing Casey suffering after the races was really disturbing since he’s a rider that usually never complains about physical problems. There was a real concern about his health because it wasn’t clear what was wrong with him. It was easy to say he was suffering from psychological stress that was destroying him, but he was really ill and until you find out what the causes it’s normal to worry. The choice to safeguard him, put us all under severe criticism but in the end it was the right decision. It was test, that we all passed. The thing that made me smile the most were the rumors and gossip regarding me. From the summer break to the Valencia GP it seemed like I was guilty party and reason behind why Casey wasn’t racing, and it was Capirossi who hinted in an interview that I was hired by Honda to take steal Stoner away. Where’s the truth? I really can’t say, but all this proved that even in MotoGP, people like to gossip.”

Source | moto.it

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