The MotoGP™ Podcast crystal ball has worked wonders again! Just a few days on from Francesco Bagnaia claiming a phenomenal maiden MotoGP™ victory, the brand-new Last On The Brakes episode is with the much-adored Ducati Lenovo Team Manager Davide Tardozzi – how about that for timing.
Tardozzi has been a team manager in World Championship motorcycle racing for the best part of three decades. In that time, not only has he become famous for his wild celebrations in the pit box, but he’s also worked with some of the biggest superstars the sport has ever known, shipped a gigantic sculpture of a Giraffe to the USA and learned fair few things about managing people that we should all take note of in our own lives.
Plenty of topics, as always, are discussed in the latest episode. But the following snippet is about Ducati’s management style – the ‘Ducati way’, let’s say. Tardozzi admits he loves to have a family feel about his team, and it’s not just about having the best people in world doing their jobs. Getting the most out of a team is much more than that.
“I think that is very, very important to be in contact with the team members. I don't want to say daily, but weekly, at least. With many of them, even daily - with the people that are closer to me, and with the factory,” begins Tardozzi. “But in the end, what I love is to have the family feeling. ‘Family feeling’ means that you need to be really close to them or you need to organise things all together.
“I really think that if you have a… not ‘worker’, not a ‘good worker’ in the garage, but if you have people that love themselves, they help themselves, it’s a big help for the rider too. Because the rider needs, and they want to be part of that, they want to do something to this group. And the result is a performance thing. Having a good team connection, I think that makes performance. It’s not only that you need the best mechanics.
“You don't need to have the 10 best mechanics of the world or the 10 best engineers. You need to have the best person on this job connected to the other job. Each one of them need to know what their field is and who's next to this field to be related with. So it’s very difficult to find the right people in the right position.
“And again, I think that this makes performance. Because the riders are like animals. When they are sat on their chair, while the mechanics are working, they’re there sitting like this, looking who is speaking with who, who is working with who, how they are related with them. And if they see that there is a very good connection that is very good feeling, they need to be part of this and they want to show that they are a part of this with results. Because they want to please them with results. So I think that a good team makes performance.”
Head over to your favoured Podcast platform to listen or watch the Last On The Brakes Podcast with Davide Tardozzi, and catch up on any that you might have missed!