Herve Poncharal

Valencia has not so far been a lucky venue for Tech 3's Moto2 team. The team was scheduled to test at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in December, and were confronted with snow, a rarity in this part of Spain. Returning  to the track for this week's test alongside some of the World Superbike teams, they were spared snow, but instead had to deal with two days of rain and a cold and wet track. So when the sun came out on Thursday morning, the team breathed a collective sigh of relief. As Herve Poncharal put it: "We got here on Monday and since then we have only had 4 hours on track, but finally we got some work done."

Poncharal was delighted with the way the final day of testing went for Tech 3's own bike. "I am very, very happy, we made a big step forward," the Tech 3 team boss told MotoMatters.com. "We didn't find any chatter with the chassis, which was a problem we had at earlier tests." The chatter had been solved at a previous test with a revised chassis, but the conditions were such that the team hadn't been able to confirm the changes had fixed the problem entirely. In the better conditions - "Not good, only decent," Poncharal qualified - neither Yuki Takahashi nor Raffaele de Rosa encountered the chatter.

The 800cc formula is dead. MotoGP is set to return to 1000cc from 2012, according to a proposal submitted to the Grand Prix Commission at Valencia today. The 800cc bikes have received a deluge of criticism, almost from the moment they were introduced, and that deluge has finally buried them.

The decision has hinged upon a change of mind by the MSMA, the manufacturers association. So far, the manufacturers have been opposed to any changes to the MotoGP formula, partly because high costs of entry created a barrier to new entrants in the class, allowing the existing participants to dominate the class. But the high costs have taken their toll even on the existing manufacturers, and with the future of Suzuki in the class in doubt under the current rules, and even doubt about just how long Honda was prepared to continue, a change was almost inevitable. 2012 is the earliest date it is possible to make the change, as the current 5 year contract that exists between Dorna, the FIM and the MSMA expires at the end of 2011. That contract states that no changes may be made to the engine capacity without a unanimous decision by all of the manufacturers in the MSMA.

The testing limits imposed at the beginning of the season have caused much debate throughout the year. The number of winter tests were cut to just 6 days in total (plus 2 days after the final Grand Prix at Valencia) in order to restrict engine mileage and severely cut costs. But since the announcement that there will be six new riders entering the MotoGP class next season, lobbying has started for extra testing time to allow the rookies to get up to speed. 

Monster Tech 3 Yamaha rider Herve Poncharal had previously expressed his opposition to the extra tests for the rookies, despite having Ben Spies joining Monster Tech 3 as a rookie for 2010. MotoMatters.com caught up with Poncharal to ask him to explain his opposition.

Herve Poncharal: At the moment this is an MSMA proposal [to allow two extra days of testing for the rookies, MM] that will be on the agenda of this weekend's Grand Prix Commission. Me personally, as Monster Tech 3 Yamaha owner, I am against it. We will talk about it in the IRTA committee meeting to give an official position in the Grand Prix Commission. I have a feeling the committee will reject it, but it is only a feeling.

One of the great privileges of working as a journalist inside the MotoGP paddock is that you get to speak to some of the great minds that work there. Speaking to people like Herve Poncharal of the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team, Lucio Cecchinello of the LCR Honda team and Pete Benson of Repsol Honda - to name just a few - is always a fascinating and thought-provoking experience. The only downside is that they have your number when you get it wrong.

So the ever-friendly Herve Poncharal phoned MotoMatters.com HQ today, to point out that we had got it wrong in our story on Jules Cluzel. Contrary to what we had reported, he told us, he did not say he had already signed Cluzel, but merely expressed the hope that the Tech 3 team would be able to sign the young Frenchman some time soon. In the interview - which was filmed for the official MotoGP.com website - Poncharal did say that "one of the riders will certainly be Jules Cluzel". This does not mean that a contract had been signed, however, as Poncharal was keen to point out to us.

So MotoMatters.com is guilty of exactly what we accused Poncharal of doing: jumping the gun. We have been hoist by our own petard, as the old saying has it.

MotoGP's biggest problem right now is the number of bikes on the grid. The withdrawal of Kawasaki, leaving just a single bike in the Hayate team cut the grid down to 18 bikes, and once Sete Gibernau's Grupo Francisco Hernando team pulled out, the field was cut just to 17. With Kawasaki almost certain to withdraw the last remaining bike from the Hayate team next year and the return of the extra Ducati for the Aspar team, the grid is likely to stay at 17, though it could increase to 18 if Honda does add an extra bike, as HRC has hinted it might.

To deal with this problem, and drastically reduce the costs of participation, Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta suggested that the rules be altered to allow production-based 1000cc engines in prototype chassis to run against the existing 800cc full prototypes. As a serious suggestion, it was almost certainly doomed from the start, but as a bargaining gambit, it has been a stroke of genius. The suggestion immediately jolted MSMA into action, and at the Sachsenring, the manufacturers organization offered a counter proposal to lease just 800cc prototype engines on their own, rather than entire bikes. They asked the Grand Prix Commission, MotoGP's rulemaking body, for some time to come up with a more detailed proposal, which they promised to present at the meeting scheduled for this weekend at Indianapolis.

That proposal was presented this morning to the Grand Prix Commission - sort of. After the Grand Prix Commission met, the press release issued contained only a few minor detail changes to the 2009 tire regulations, so MotoGPMatters.com tracked down Herve Poncharal, boss of the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team and IRTA's representative inside the Grand Prix Commission and asked him just what the MSMA's proposal had consisted of. The answer, it appears, is a little more complicated than just a straight proposal. 

Since the end of 2008, Herve Poncharal has found himself a very busy man indeed. As head of both the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team and the IRTA representative in the Grand Prix Commission, Poncharal has had his hands full both on and off the track. With the global financial crisis impacting MotoGP so heavily, Poncharal has been especially busy finding ways to cut costs and secure the future of the championship, working in tandem with the other members of the Grand Prix Commission.

So when we had a chance to speak to Poncharal on Thursday night at Donington Park, prior to the final British Grand Prix to be run at the track, we jumped at it. We had hoped to get maybe half an hour of his time, but we got so much more than we bargained for. Like all good cub reporters, we had brought a list of questions, and had prepared ourselves mentally to go through them in the hope of getting some interesting answers. As it turned out, Poncharal had been preparing for us, too, and we ended up covering subjects as diverse as the role of an independent MotoGP team, cost-cutting in MotoGP, the Moto2 class, the proposals from the MSMA to supply cheaper engines, how tobacco sponsorship nearly destroyed MotoGP, the benefits of sponsoring MotoGP, James Toseland and Ben Spies. So wide-ranging was the interview that we have been forced to cut it up into several parts.

We started off the interview talking about the rookie rule. Or rather, the Tech 3 Yamaha boss took us to task for not understanding the importance of the rule to the satellite teams. Here's what Herve Poncharal had to say:

Herve Poncharal: I know MotoGPMatters. Maybe 5 times a day, I'm going to Crash.net, GPOne, MotoGPMatters, MCN, a French site called Caradisiac, everybody's reading each other when there is something. This is a good website; sometimes there is a little bit too much polemic - which is good, because we need to create some polemic.

But one thing I read which I thought was not too accurate was that the rookie clause was no use and no meaning, and because Simoncelli signed with Gresini and signed with Honda, it was proof that it would be useless. Not at all! Because without that rule, Simoncelli would have been with HRC. I was also talking to them, so I know very well, and if Simoncelli went to Honda it's because Japan on Honda's side got involved and Yamaha Japan didn't think they had to get involved. Anyway, because of that rule, Gresini managed to catch a top rider, even though Gresini could not afford him, because HRC wanted him. Signing Simoncelli has helped him to sign San Carlo [the Italian snack manufacturer which sponsors the Gresini team], because San Carlo was saying "I'm out of here with the result we have and the riders we have." So it helped him to sign instantly and it helped him to have the factory paying for him. So the rookie rule has been helping the independent teams.

The radical drop in the size of the MotoGP grid has everyone inside MotoGP worried. First Kawasaki officially withdrew, leaving only Marco Melandri on the Hayate in the class, then Grupo Francisco Hernando pulled out of sponsoring Sete Gibernau's GFH team, dropping the number of entries from 18 to 17. Add to that the shenanigans surrounding Yuki Takahashi's replacement by Gabor Talmacsi, after Talmacsi was able to bring funds to the cash-strapped team, and the picture of a series in crisis is complete. 

Clearly something has to be done, to reduce costs and to expand the number of bikes on the grid. Last week at the Sachsenring, the Grand Prix Commission met to discuss the situation, and Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta launched the idea of a two-tier system, allowing bikes with prototype chassis with engines based on production bikes to race against the current generation of fully factory supported prototype 800s. The story was unearthed by Paolo Scalera of the Italian sports daily Corriere dello Sport, and senior MotoGP journalist Michael Scott in last week's issue of GPWeek opined that the move was probably a bullying tactic by Ezpeleta, aimed at forcing the factories into coming up with a counterproposal.

It seems the thought of racing against production-based engines has done exactly that. At Donington, Tech 3 boss and head of IRTA Herve Poncharal spoke extensively to MotoGPMatters.com, covering a wide range of subjects. One of the subjects he discussed at length was the cost-cutting proposals put forward by the MSMA to counter the exodus of teams from the premier class. He revealed that as Mike Scott had predicted, the MSMA had offered to lease engines only to MotoGP teams at a much more affordable price, allowing them to build their own prototype chassis around the engine.