Barcelona Review: Make it Look Easy

Ducati team chief Livio Suppo's first motorcycle Grand Prix was at Shah Alam in 1996; it was my first broadcast for Eurosport that weekend, too. He was in a Benetton shirt, keeping an eye on the sponsorship of the works Honda 250cc team that was on the fringe of the works Repsol Honda team of Mick Doohan, Alex Criville and Tadayuki Okada, who was making his debut on the V-Twin 500.

We just seemed to get chatting that weekend, the common denominator being our first work race while staying in the same hotel. The Benetton bike struggled on Michelin that weekend as the Aprilia Max Biaggi domination rolled on into what would be his third 250 title come Eastern Creek at the end of the year. But the stubbly bearded Italian would always be positive. Always pushing, pushing...

He couldn't get to Phillip Island the following year, but sent a fax to the HRC squad that was promptly stuck on the fridge door at the back of the garage, wishing everyone luck in the whole team as by then the little green sticker of Benetton had crept on to the works NSR 500s as they won every single race that season between Mick, Alex and Tady. I always remember that fax. Very team player.

At the end of 1999, Livio said he was out of Benetton and out of the paddock. Someone who would always help me translate the Italian headlines and stories while sitting in the paddock at Imola, had gone.

Imola had gone too, so it was a double whammy for the 2000 season, but the back-to-front PLAYLIFE logos on the side of the Liegois Honda 125s gave me happy memories, as in 1998 and 1999 he had put Benetton money into Marco Melandri's 125cc season, winning his very first Grand Prix at Assen '98.

Livio Suppo in 1999 © Toby Moody

That same week Marco and his father drove their little motorhome over to the UK where we met up at the Benetton F1 factory in Oxfordshire for a look around. Tohru Ukawa was there too, still the 250 rider in the same colours. At the time the Benetton 'son' was running the team and he showed the five of us around before bolting back to the office.

We piled into my tatty ten-year-old Golf and went for a pie and a pint in a proper English pub. We had a bit of trouble convincing the tiny little Melandri that this was real food and we weren't trying to poison him. He still picked over his food... It was a fun day during a fun year.

In the end, the 1999 season saw the Italian lose out on the 125 title by one point due to missing the first two races through injury, and a non score at the third.

So a friend was lost from the paddock, but Suppo soon popped up after a year away, now working for the World Superbike team. Ben Bostrom was riding for them, and Livio had not missed a trick as he had got L&M sponsorship on the side of the 916 Ducati.

I didn't know what L&M was, less for it being on the Lancia sportscars when I was young. But the penny soon dropped. They were a brand of Philip Morris and I remember the conversation I had with him about them. He was so proud to get a foot in the door of the biggest supporter of motorsport who was not actually a manufacturer, two or four wheels...

Jerez in 2001, he came with Claudio Domenicalli to announce their four stroke MotoGP debut just two years later in 2003. He had pushed like mad to get Bologna too into the new era of Grand Prix racing, truly believing from the moment he was first at Ducati it was the place for the company to go to. Sure, he was biased with the memories of Melandri winning races and nearly a title on hardly much money, but Grand Prix was his aim and he'd got it.

Italian intra Ducati politics aside, Livio rocked up in Suzuka in 2003 as the team manager for Loris Capirossi and Troy Bayliss, with Loris getting on the podium first time out. He could have been forgiven for thinking this Grand Prix lark was easy, but Honda's dominance on the V5 put paid to that, even though the Barcelona win of Capirossi was a bit special.

I remember the team going completely ape on pit wall as the number 65 crossed the line, Suppo in the middle howling at the top of his voice like some pack-leading wolf.

Fast forward through Carlos Checa, Sete Gibernau and a hole in the middle of last season that should have seen Capirossi get the actual 22 points he would have needed to win the world title against Nicky Hayden were it not for a six-rider pile-up into Turn 1.

Livio Suppo © DPPI

Keep the pictures spinning through Bayliss whooping their arses at Valencia for a final 'up yours MotoGP, I told you I could do it all along', and you see that there has been a lot on his plate.

The one thing that hasn't changed has been the nicotine-stained top-lip as the Marlboro reds were always close at hand in the top pocket - just like Flavio Briatore...

We've had our slight differences of opinions, but he's always heard a point through to the end before making comment. Never have I left a chat thinking he's a complete idiot. OK, he's trotted out a perfected PR line after a race such as Mugello last week, yes, but he knows the score with our jobs upstairs in the press office.

More to the point, at least he knows where the Press Office is, regularly doing a lap after a good day, or even a bad day such as - again - Mugello. A good weather vane is the cigar. It was a large one after Qatar this year, let me tell you... Stuff the 'no smoking' signs...

He is an extremely passionate man. He swears like a trooper when off the record, but it's so from the heart you don't really notice it. It's from the heart like a true Ducatisi, just as the outgoing CEO was, Federico Minoli.

He doesn't know how to change a wheel, and would never tell you as such. Ron Dennis knew what that's like, going on to be a team boss in F1 who had racing first and foremost at his heart. Hell, McLaren were semi-serious about a Land Speed Record attempt in 1994/5 for the fun of it, but Suppo understands that getting in a raft of sponsors and keeping them happy, while still taking on the spinning of more plates in attracting even more sponsors at the same time.

Therefore the technical bits are down to Filippo Preziosi on the Ducati GP7, being the vanguard in getting the bike on track in May 2006 for this season, while the GP8 is already on track in Italy for next season. That is a technical side, and Suppo stays away from telling the engineers what to do. Maybe he's too passionate to be an engineer?

After Catalunya on Sunday, I saw him right after the podium. He still hadn't had enough time to even light a cigarette. He was ecstatic, almost as if he couldn't believe it. He just couldn't help himself but give me a big bear hug, asking in his Italian English, "What the hell that was like on TV?!"

"That was one of the most beautiful races we've seen, and a special feeling because two years ago here we struggled with tyres, but Bridgestone have done an unbelievable job," he said.

Valentino Rossi chases the Ducati of Casey Stoner © DPPI

What he actually meant to say was, Bridgestone were so terrible at Barcelona two years ago, they were worried sick about the Spanish 2007 result right from when they drove out of the place on June 19th 2006, the day after they had two riders in hospital.

That was because they didn't actually know how bad a race they were going to have 12 months ago, while in 2005 they were 11th, exactly 60 seconds slower than the winning time of Casey Stoner last weekend, on an 800.

But he was the one who said, "As long as Valentino is in thes championship, we are not going to win it. He is so strong. What we have to do is go out and win races."

That would keep the sponsors happy and eventually they'd win enough races to make up a championship challenge, just as they are doing at the moment.

The easy side of things is that Ducati has got Marlboro sponsoring the team lock stock and barrel, so talk of struggle and penny pinching in the paddock does not apply. But he convinced them to go with Ducati and a new project, something I understand Marlboro were a bit nervous about after backing another new project back in 1997, the Modenas KR bike that was a disaster.

But then, that's the trick - making things look easy in life. Stoner and Ducati made it look easy in Catalunya. It never, ever is...