OFFICIAL PROGRAMME ·· GET MY AGENT !!
best for him . What is the best package we can put together ? And if the management or the factories argue with us , we can actually say whatever we want .”
Laurens Klein Koerkamp ’ s rider management experience is relatively recent but already quite starred in this paddock . “ I work with Michael van der Mark , Garrett Gerloff , Glenn van Straalen , Jeffrey Buis and Yuta Okaya ,” said the Dutchman . “ I also worked with Leon Camier in the last 4-5 years of his career .” He is another with a long background in racing , and in several areas , as he himself explained . “ I was responsible for Yamaha Motor Europe ( YME )’ s motorcycle racing activities between 1998 and the end of 2014 . This included WorldSBK , WorldSSP , EWC but also World MX , Enduro , etc . Basically , everything excluding Grand Prix . Having been with Yamaha I had been thinking to start my own company for a while and in 2015 several things came together , so I started my own Racing Management company . It includes , in addition to rider management , sponsor search and marketing activities , all in the motorcycle racing side .”
Having also been on both sides of the rider / team interface at contract time , Laurens agrees that his experience was only a help when it came time to look after his riders and clients . “ I can understand easily the views from both sides ,” he explained . “ This is a great help to find reasonable compromises in contractual discussions but also solutions in case of issues or even propose advice to the manufacturer or team for improvement . Also I believe to have a large network in the paddock with regard to technical ( and other ) staff which sometimes can be very useful for my riders but also their ( new ) teams bringing it together . Understanding corporate policies and communication aspects are definitely also an asset to make all go smoothly .” He also helps to organise each rider ’ s social media , to make the most of it and to avoid preventable mistakes inside the rider ’ s team .
And what a good manager must not do ? “ It ’ s important for a rider manager is to remain on the background , but know what is going on around the rider . Leave the technical matters to the team and engineers , but if there are structural issues , be sufficiently aware to discuss calmly with team management away from the pitbox .” And we just thought rider managers rolled in every couple of seasons , got their riders all signed up and went home again ? It ’ s clearly not quite that simple .
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