Kawasaki Racing Team Guim Roda
On two WorldSBK wheels the most successful Team Manager of recent times is Guim Roda . He has overseen one championship win for Tom Sykes and no less than six for Jonathan Rea . Consecutively , no less . His career path is a little convoluted , as his first role in life was going to be in Industrial Design . He left his degree course just before the end of it because he was so busy on other projects , some of two wheels , some not . He has been a racer , a journalist , and been involved in various businesses with his brother Biel , the team ’ s Marketing and Commercial manager . Entering WorldSSP from the Spanish championship their confidence , organisation and results for their size saw them chosen as the official Kawasaki WorldSSP team , then the top green WorldSBK team in 2012 . When the Kawasaki WorldSSP work came along Roda finally became Team Manager only , no longer also Joan Lascorz ’ Crew Chief , and in year three when Lascorz went to Superbike it was back to doubling up roles again , until Provec also moved up to be the factory Kawasaki WorldSBK team . Straight away . “ I became Team Manager , taking a much more deep dive into this role than before , but with many more people around to help .” Again , like almost all his peer group , Roda had no youthful ambitions to be a Superbike Team Manager . “ No , it was a consequence .” He said , succinctly . “ As a racer I saw many things were not properly done inside teams , because I never had the opportunity to concentrate only on racing . I needed to take care about many things to go race . So you never really enjoy enough the possibility to run at the maximum without thinking about other things . I saw many details trying to make things more professional , things that should be done in a different way . I never had in mind being a Team Manager in a factory team . It was a consequence – and lucky .” Now the team is so big and Kawasaki has its name literally over the door , the role of Team Manager is different from before . He is working triple time , it appears . “ Maybe in some bigger teams there should be my position as Team Manager , then a Team Director and another Sports Manager . I normally cover these three roles . And I am linked a lot with design and imager in general , because of my skills in Industrial Design – and because I like it ! All about design and industrial design is linked to covering human needs and that is why I try to be involved in directing the way people work , the way to organise . A place to stay calm , a place to eat , to work and how to proceed . So we need to understand how we want to work and organise accordingly .” Sounds a bit Zen to some , but it all has a practical purpose . “ Everything is organised to win , to the performance , basically ,” said Roda . “ We work well but in the end we have good riders , and we have the budget possibilities working for a factory . So we try to transform the money and resources Kawasaki give in the best way possible . We do not make things – we try to help people to make things possible – the rider and Kawasaki . At the end , we make nothing – but we help them .” As Roda stresses , the rider makes always makes the difference . But however Guim and co are helping , it clearly works well .
Guim Roda
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