KIWI RIDER JULY 2021 VOL1 | Page 52

Peter Benson , who has tasted world championship success with the late Nicky Hayden ( MotoGP 2006 ), Tito Rabat ( Moto2 , 2014 ) and Franco Morbidelli ( Moto2 , 2017 ), now heads the KTM MotoGP test team
from , and I did , with my ears open and my mouth shut ( they taught us about that also ).” “ I always thought I would love to make a living working in racing , rather than working in a motorcycle shop and I figured that even if it was a hard time , it was important to do what was really interesting and emotionally involving and so that was worth ( initially ) paying for .” Today Balclutha ’ s Paul Trevathan and Aucklander Peter Benson continue the tradition . “ Quite a few of the people I know went to Europe because New Zealand was too small for professional race mechanics , or racers ,” says Benson .
“ We were all very versatile in that we always built what we rode . We all learnt how to do things ourselves and figure out a solution to get back on track ASAP . “ Something I still notice now is that in Europe a lot of people won ’ t have a go at anything that ’ s not in their job description . When I was in England in the mid-90s it was something that really stood out .”
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