Secrets of bike development: A rider’s “feeling, judgement” not enough

A rider’s insight (or, often, complaints) about his bike have traditionally been a crucial cog in how a team develops their machinery - for example, Marc Marquez has already criticised his Repsol Honda 2023 prototype after the postseason test.

But ex-Yamaha and Suzuki team manager Brivio has explained how European manufacturers are leading their Japanese rivals because they do not rely solely on their riders’ opinions.

"In today's MotoGP, no,” Brivio told Slick Magazine about a rider’s feedback to his team. 

“The rider is fine, because he is the one who rides, but his judgement, his feeling, must be supported by more precise scientific data. 

“It only becomes the stimulus to start the research. That is the evolution. 

“MotoGP is now a much more technological environment, and new technologies must be used. 

“Because the riders always say the same things: ‘there is little grip, there is no acceleration, there is little feeling when entering corners’

“But you have to understand why, and today this is explained by the most serious and sophisticated analysis of the data. Modern MotoGP requires it to be done this way, and the European manufacturers now do so."

Brivio insisted that bikes should not be tailor-made to suit its rider: “It is no longer the period in which the problem is solved with a frame dedicated to a rider, or by making the bike with the characteristics of a particular rider.”

Brivio was the team manager who recruited Valentino Rossi for his legendary spell at Yamaha. He then set up and led Suzuki as Joan Mir won the 2020 championship.

Brivio believes in a ‘performance team’ strategy - an “engineering group dedicated to data analysis” with “the task of supporting the official team during the race weekend” is the way to go.

"Yes, we at Suzuki created it already in 2016, our second year of racing,” he said. 

“We were the first to have it, among the Japanese, and we were therefore the closest to the Europeans. 

“Now the surviving Japanese manufacturers must change their approach.”

Honda and Yamaha have “not taken this step forwards”, Brivio insists.

“The problem, however, is another: to understand how to do it.

"I recently heard Marc Marquez say: 'I once asked the team why we tried that particular piece, and they told me they didn't know.' 

“Well, it means that in Honda they are still using the old method. It seems that they are throwing on pieces, copying what they see around, to understand what effect it makes. But that's not good."

Brivio's old protege Mir will join Marquez at Repsol Honda in the 2023 MotoGP rider line-up.