Historical pillar and co-founder of the Tech 3 team, Guy Coulon is its Technical Director while being Johann Zarco's chief mechanic. After a dazzling start to the season with two podiums and two pole positions, the last two Grands Prix in Tuscany and Catalonia were a little less sparkling, and we asked Guy for his views.
What is your overall assessment of the Catalan Grand Prix for Johann?
“We could have had a good race but we had, even if it wasn't very visible from the outside, several small vicissitudes during the event. In fact, we had a very good pace, comparable to Rossi's. But at the start there was a clash between Vinales and Johann because a guy cut right under Vinales' nose. So Johann finds himself 14th in the first partial, while he was 8th on the grid.
“He sees that it's getting a little looser in front, so he has to pass Vinales quickly, which he manages to do in turn 4. But there, while he's overtaking him, a yellow flag is featured (for Dovi's fall, but I'm not sure). If he passed, he received a penalty, so he braked on the corner, almost crashing because he saw the yellow flag very late. It was super hot and he lost 2 seconds. It took him 4 laps to come back and pass again. It was a series of little problems like this. During the second half of the race, he had an equipment problem which really bothered him. »
What do you call an equipment problem?
“A problem with the pilot's equipment, but I don't want to incriminate anyone. So it was a succession of little problems that shouldn't have happened. Certainly, better qualified on the grid, there would not have been the problem of starting.
“To recover from that, on Monday as we didn't have much to try apart from a front tire, Johann decided himself to do two race simulations in a row, which he did very well. 'elsewhere. Everyone was on soft tires in the race, so we did the two simulations with the medium and the hard. With the medium, he made an extremely solid simulation, without a timer on the panel or on the bike, without any benchmarks. He wanted to ride relaxed and see what it would be like in the end. We confirmed that his potential and that of the bike were good.
“We didn't race well at Mugello and our result corresponded to our week which was not good. In Barcelona, we didn't pull out all the stops because it was poorly planned. »
Qualifying seemed more difficult than at the start of the season. What is the reason ?
“Look, I don’t really know… It’s always difficult to explain clearly.
Was there no particular reason?
“The grip was rather average in the afternoon, which is not the Yamaha's cup of tea. Still, it was pretty tight. We could have done better, but for once his best partials were not end to end on a lap. We were right next to Rossi in qualifying, he was 7, we were 8. Vinales was just ahead, the 3 Yamahas were 1 tenth.
" For the best laps in the race, the 4 Yamahas follow one another, including Syahrin. We have the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th best times in the race. There are 8 hundredths between Vinales 5th and Zarco 7th.
“In summary, Johann and Vinales had a bad result based on the very start of the race, and Johann's equipment problem meant that he finished behind Vinales. »
The last 16 Grands Prix have been won by a Honda or Ducati rider, since the victory of Valentino Rossi in Assen last year. Yet in the Championship three Yamaha riders – Valentino Rossi, Maverick Vinales et Johann zarco – occupy the second, third and fourth positions. How do you explain this paradoxical situation?
“We have a good bike, the Yamaha doesn't really have a weak point, but it just lacks the edge to win. If you like, she doesn't win but she has an interesting average score. It's like a student who is fairly good in all subjects, but who doesn't do 19 out of 20 in math. We are happy with 15 in all subjects. It's a bike that isn't too complicated, that doesn't have any major flaws, but that perhaps doesn't currently have the little hint of quality that's needed to win fairly easily. »
Often at a Grand Prix, a Yamaha clearly dominates the others, sometimes Johann's, sometimes Valentino's. Why aren't their performances consistently closer?
“We are each trying in our own corner to find not the miracle adjustment, but the little recipe that will make us better. Sometimes you lose the thread a little and you find yourself a bit worse off. Often not by much, but 1 tenth of a turn, you're dead.
“If we analyze Mugello and Barcelona, what Valentino lacked to win was engine. Whereas the factory engine, it's much livelier than the one we have. So we say to ourselves that in Assen we will be able to have a good result with a good average score, without having a score that particularly stands out from the rest. »
We saw in Barcelona the difficulty of choosing the front tire for the race, then managing it. On such a circuit with its recently modified layout and redone surface, don't the aerodynamic appendages that pin the front wheel to the ground constitute an additional problem?
" I do not believe. On the contrary, in Barcelona they serve us well, even if they take away a little top speed. It wasn't even possible to remove them because with the same bike without the wings last year, we struggled in the straight line like hell. We must not forget that the 4 Yamahas last year were in Q1! Folger and Vinales miraculously progressed to Q2, while Valentino and Johann did not make it and were 13th and 14th on the grid. We tried something during the warm up and we got through it. Not them. So a lot of the problems have been solved with the fins for us this year. »
You will ride at Tech 3 with KTMs next year, including in Moto2. What overall memory will you keep of the Mistral era in Moto 2?
“Clearly it’s a failure since we didn’t win. We will have learned some things, but we only won one race. It's not bad to have won a Grand Prix with a bike we made. Then, it depends on the analysis we do. Overall, for the standard viewer, it's a failure.
“You see, what Fabio did with the Speed Up last weekend shows that there are solutions. I was doubly happy that Fabio won because the Speed Up is by far, by far, the best built and most accomplished bike on the Moto2 field, if not the entire field. »
It's flattering for them.
" That's flattering ? What surprises me is that no one realizes this.
Maybe not everyone has your eye.
“If you go see it, if you take the trouble to go see it, you don't need a trained eye to see the quality of the machine. I'm surprised. Our bike also had qualities, and when you look closely at the riders who came to us, the following year there were very few who achieved better results on another bike. Marcel Schrotter in 2014 finished 10th in the Championship with 80 points. We never saw him in the top 10 again. Isaac Vinales in 2016 scored 19 points for us, but less the following year on a Kalex, but he was in his second year and no longer a rookie. Which proves that the analysis can be done as we wish. »
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