There were some fantastic scenes after Miguel Oliveira’s win at Catalunya last weekend. The KTM team were over the moon with the result, the second win in two years for the factory team and their fourth overall in MotoGP. It was fantastic to see the relief on all of the faces of the managers and crew, having seen all of their hard work paying off with the full 25 points. There were plenty of hugs, lots of happy conversations, and some champagne spraying to cap it all off.
One person who made an appearance among the crowd was Dani Pedrosa, 3-time world champion and now test rider for KTM. Pedrosa retired from MotoGP at the end of the 2018 season after a 13-year stint in the premier class and was one of the four ‘Aliens’, the riders who dominated MotoGP between 2007 and 2012. He is arguably one of the riders who most deserved a MotoGP title but never managed to win the championship, taking his two titles in the 125cc and 250cc classes instead.
Seeing Dani celebrating with the KTM crowd was refreshing for a long-time viewer like me. The respect shown to him by the team and the riders was obvious just by watching, and he was even given a round of applause as he entered the KTM pits before the celebrations properly kicked off. In one particular moment, Oliveira even described how Pedrosa had influenced his race win, saying “Dani said to go with the hard [tyre], so I said, ‘okay then, I will'”. Such is the respect that Pedrosa garners that when he recommends a tyre combination to a rider, the rider listens and acts upon it accordingly.
There’s two reasons a rider in Dani’s position has such influence within the team. The first is obviously his stature within the sport, and his long history of winning races and challenging for championships. The second reason is his position as a test rider. Many people forget the sheer amount of work and dedication that test riders put into preparing and altering a grand prix motorcycle, but they are perhaps some of the hardest working people within a MotoGP manufacturer’s lineup.
The evidence of Pedrosa’s work is clear when you look at KTM’s results. Since he started testing for the Austrian manufacturer in 2019, the bike has made massive leaps forward in its competitiveness. KTM’s first wins came in 2020, just one year after Pedrosa began testing for them, and he is often cited by members of their management as one of the reasons they were able to take such big steps forward between 2018 and today. Pedrosa doesn’t race as a wildcard for KTM either, so his work is often done in the background rather than visible to the fans out on circuit. Nonetheless, his position is critical within KTM’s plans for MotoGP success.
He’s not the only test rider to have a big impact. When Suzuki stormed to the 2020 title in both the team and rider categories, their test rider Sylvan Guintoli was hailed as one of the biggest hands in the development of their championship-winning machine. The Frenchman has been working tirelessly on the Suzuki for years now, and even the riders were quick to praise him as one of the most important factors in their success. He occasionally races as a wildcard or replacement rider to this day, but once again the majority of his work is done behind the scenes.
I think it’s important to recognise the sheer amount of work that these test riders put into developing a competitive motorcycle. I’ve heard people describe the position of MotoGP test rider as the dream job, a lavish lifestyle where one gets to ride competitive motorcycles regularly and get called in to race whenever needed, but that’s simply not accurate. Test riders have a rigorous job, having to assist mechanics and engineers to push every individual part of the motorcycle to its most competitive state. They are often the riders who put in the most laps at any given official test, and they rarely get to showcase their work themselves under race conditions, assuming they want to do so in the first place.
For a person with such an important role, Pedrosa is incredibly down-to-Earth about it all. This is a man who has fought and beaten the likes of Rossi, Lorenzo, Stoner and Marquez, who has one of the best records in modern MotoGP, and who has cemented himself as one of the all-time greats. In a position like his one can easily imagine getting cocky or self obsessed, but Pedrosa clearly has a lot of respect for the men and women he’s testing for, as well as the riders he’s preparing the machine for. He was extremely complimentary of Oliveira’s ride on Sunday, and quick to downplay his role in the victory. It’s exactly how I remember Dani from when he was racing, and it’s fantastic to see him keeping a cool head on his shoulders.
So, to summarise, test riders are one of the most critical parts of any manufacturers success, some of the hardest working individuals in modern-day grand prix racing, and often receive the least praise by fans and critics due to their behind-the-scenes position within a manufacturer. Not quite the lavish lifestyle some were imagining, and certainly a position that garners some respect. It’s extremely refreshing to see riders like Pedrosa and Guintoli receiving praise for their work, and I genuinely hope we continue to see this trend across all manufacturers.
Solomon Talks Bikes 