EXCITING CONTENT wrong power , it ’ s not going to work no matter what I do . That ’ s why with the electronics guy you need to work together to make sure that he knows what I ’ m doing , I know what he ’ s doing , to try to go together in the same direction .” I said it ’ s a complicated job , didn ’ t I ? Another pure engineer turned Crew Chief is KRT ’ s Dutch Master , Marcel Duinker . His path to Crew Chief was laid out in his own heart and mind early on . “ When I was seven or eight years old I knew I wanted to be an engineer ,” said Duinker . “ My father was a Honda dealer for 35 years , so in this period I had a close connection to this manufacturer . In 1996 , I was 18 , and I did my year of my practical training during my schooling at Honda Netherlands . Already I knew I wanted to enter racing , because I was really into bikes . The following year I moved to Molenaar Racing with Haruchika Aoki - as a mechanic . I was 18 years old and travelled the world … and we won the title again . An interesting period .” After graduation from College , Ten Kate Racing came calling . “ I was a couple of years there , then moved to the Kawasaki MotoGP™ team ,” remembers Marcel . After five years specialising in suspension in that role , Duinker said , “ I was one of the two lucky guys to get moved to Kawasaki ’ s World Superbike project . It was run by a different team from now , and at the end of 2011 Kawasaki put Danilo Casonato and I with Tom Sykes . At that point I became a Crew Chief . With the Provec Team being new to this level of racing we started with a clean sheet , so it was quite interesting . The target was to transform the Ninja ZX- 10R into a winning machine .” How was that undoubted transformation done then ? The right people plus the right engineering know-how , it seems . “ This requires quite some performance from a number of people ,” explained Duinker , “ You need to have a rider who knows how to find the limit , and explain where these limitations are . You need to have this click , this chemistry with the rider , and you need to have a good amount of engineering experience to translate all the info you generate over the weekend into structural changes on the bike . In the first few years , every single part of this bike , even the rigidity of the footrest or the colours of the buttons on the handlebars , went through our hands .” Marcel has been with Kawasaki since his first Crew Chief job fielding first Sykes , then Leon Haslam and now Alex Lowes . He understands that there are different kinds of Crew Chiefs but he also feels that the engineering side is the first and most important thing to get right , to unleash the full potential of any rider / bike package . The best thing about the job for Duinker , as competitive in his approach to his job as the racer is to his or her own , is easily answered . “ There is a target and a challenge for everything you do . Every single lap , session , day , weekend , you have a challenge . You have a clear target every time and that it to get your rider on the highest step of the podium . This never , ever , gets boring .” Someone who got into being a Crew Chief in WorldSBK from the other side of the pit wall from Duinker , so to speak , is Pere Riba . Proof that you can be a successful Crew Chief from either background comes from the fact that both Duinker and Riba have been WorldSBK championship winning Crew Chiefs . Hence the feeling that we simply had to include both KRT Crew Chiefs in this feature . A WorldSSP race winner as a pro racer , he has been Crew Chief at Kawasaki for many years but before that he was a test rider , development rider , for both road and race bikes for Kawasaki .
He got ‘ head-hunted ’ internally to become a Crew Chief by KHI ’ s long term man in the WorldSBK paddock , Ichiro Yoda . “ I always say that has been one of my teachers in terms of the package of developing , racing understanding , directions to manage one weekend , in terms of technical … Many , many things . That is Mr . Yoda ,” said Pere . Riba ’ s only demand when asked to Crew Chief was to choose all the people around him in the new set-up , and the rest is history , culminating in six WorldSBK titles with Jonathan Rea . Having been a long time rider may be a great asset that Riba can call on , and did call on , when he started out being a Crew Chief . “ One of the most important things of course , because it is the top of the pyramid , is that if you want to develop a bike , it ’ s the rider ,” stated Pere . “ This is most important thing . Then another very important thing is that the bike has been ridden for a feeling that this is something that many engineers and people forget . Of course , you have to link 100 % the feeling of the rider , because every single rider requests something different in terms of feeling , because this is many , many points for the rider that make them this kind of feeling .” Riba is not saying it is all about the rider feel , as the numbers have to work too . “ Of course , you have to put then in technical numbers , in a technical way of course . But a rider without understanding the limit , understanding the feeling of the bike , it ’ s impossible to be fast . This is the key point from my philosophy of a Crew Chief . Always when I was a rider , this is in my opinion , there are two or three keys . The first one is to understand the feelings of the rider , what you have to make in the bike to give this kind of feeling the rider requests . The second one is to keep mainly the brain of the rider in a very good shape . You have to understand each rider is different . Some riders like a warm feeling . Some riders are more cold and they don ’ t care . But you need to understand what the rider needs .” The last Crew Chief we spoke to came through to WorldSBK from a less direct route than some , but it was a very connected , hands-on one . “ I got into racing through my now brother-in-law , Michael Laverty ,” said Pata Yamaha with Brixx ’ s Phil Marron , Toprak Razgatlioglu ’ s Crew Chief . “ I ’ ve known him from school , and I ’ m actually married to his sister now . She was in my class at school . I don ’ t know if your readers want to read about that !” Yes , yes we do . Moving through the junior ranks and starting out trying to make Michael ’ s early bikes faster with chassis tweaks , learning by trial and error , Marron put in some hard yards to chase his career dream , especially travelling from Northern Ireland to BSB races while holding down his regular mechanic job back home . “ We went to races on Thursday night and back on Sunday night ” remembered Phil . “ So I had done a lot of the driving , a lot of our boats went overnight and I straight to work as a mechanic on Monday mornings . I got the bug at that stage . I learned my trade along with Michael - the racing game . I learned along with him because his comments were crystal clear .” Becoming a full-time race mechanic and moving ever onward Phil started to work with Eugene Laverty . Until his relationship with Toprak Razgatlioglu as Crew Chief at Puccetti Racing Kawasaki just a few seasons ago and now the works Yamaha team , this was maybe Phil ’ s best known working relationship . When Aprilia ’ s WorldSBK squad signed Eugene , Phil went with him as his mechanic , and started to work with someone else involved in this feature … “ Eugene asked me if I would come over as a mechanic ,” said Phil . “ Marcus Eschenbacher was the Crew Chief . Two seasons of that as chassis mechanic , number one mechanic , if you like . I learned a lot just listening to Marcus and
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