OFFICIAL PROGRAMME
Paul Denning
Pata Yamaha by Brixx Racing Paul Denning
It was obvious Paul Denning was going to be a bike-nut given that his father John owned Crescent Motorcycles in the English south coast town of Bournemouth . Denning was a motocross competitor and then finally a road racer , up to BSB standard , riding for his own team Crescent Racing . Anybody familiar with that name will know that it went on to become British Superbike champion with 2004 , then Suzuki ’ s official MotoGP™ squad , BSB Suzuki challengers , then Suzuki ’ s semi-official WorldSBK squad and now Yamaha ’ s official WorldSBK team . How many years in now ? “ It is coming up to 25 years of professional racing and how I ended up managing a team is that I decided to race myself ,” said Denning . “ Fairly quickly I took the decision , having seen a professional rider on our bike at an early stage that whilst I loved racing my skills were better placed in trying to organise and operate a team .” It was learning on the job , and thus a hard school at times for Denning early on . “ I think like a lot of people who have a lot of enthusiasm for motorcycle racing , the learning curve was to do everything wrong . To do everything underfunded , with not enough people , with ambitions that were too high and resources that were too low . But that really is the best way to learn what is required . Then , as you start to work with professional riders and engineers , you learn from those people and step-by-step what is required to be successful .” Denning is working inside WorldSBK now , and has for many years , but he and his team have been around at every level for some time , and his point of arrival in WorldSBK was a winding road . “ I got here because we were running our own team in BSB , ended up working with Suzuki in MotoGP™ for many years , and a couple of years after we moved the Suzuki BSB team to WorldSBK , entered into discussions with Yamaha . The timing was right to move to Yamaha in WorldSBK .” Denning is still loving it . “ By some degree this is my favourite project so far , because in WorldSBK , when you have a manufacturer factory team , with the resources to have a separate bike development programme , running alongside the operational side of the racing team , then whatever the base model of bike is if the development is good enough , and the team is good enough , and the riders are good enough , you have a chance to win . That was even the case with a privateer Suzuki for us . We won races and finished on the podium . WorldSBK combines the highest level of racetracks , organisation , riders and – while it is not prototype technology – the bikes themselves are advanced enough to get team managers , mechanics and fans excited . And yet there is still a sporting atmosphere , a friendly atmosphere , that pervades through he championship that is less about politics and money and more about sporting values . That has appealed to me and continues to do so .” Modern day racing , even at factory level , is a collaborative effort . In Yamaha ’ s case , Crescent provides personnel , race transporters , workshops to maintain the bikes , and the whole pit garage infrastructure . Yamaha Racing in Italy does development and engineering and then of course there is Japan , with the original motorcycle and then the real strategic race development . Experience clearly still counts in the endless game of Team Management , and Denning ’ s experience is arguably wider than any of his peers after his MotoGP™ seasons
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