Technical manager of Jonas Folger's Yamaha at Tech3, as Guy Coulon is for that of Johann Zarco, Nicolas Goyon felt that following Jonas' fantastic German Grand Prix, when he challenged Marc Marquez for victory , things started to go wrong.
“After the immense joy of the Sachsenring, everything started to go wrong, explained Goyon to speedweek, before the German announced his withdrawal. “ I noticed long before Japan that something was wrong. I could not believe nor understand the race of Aragon. He was so fast before... In Aragon, we didn't see the real Jonas Folger. Something was wrong.”
“It was only later that we realized he was ill. This disease causes moments of great weakness, followed by phases with greater strength. I recently spoke to someone who has the same illness. He told me that you have phases where you are very weak, you are tired and you can't do anything, you can't concentrate either. Looking at the season and perhaps some poor results in the past, we can see that he has been suffering for a long time. »
Goyon was looking forward to the 2018 season with great joy: “ Jonas surprised us all in 2017. He was able to quickly make the switch to Yamaha MotoGP, which impressed us. »
Folger also benefited from data recorded by Yamaha factory riders. “In each session we looked at his strengths and weaknesses, so the data from the Yamaha factory riders was very useful. We no longer looked at the data from Lorenzo because the conditions were different when he rode for Yamaha. We focused on the two official motorcycles which were running at the same time on the same track, we had the data of Rossi et Casa Particular in Viñales »
“Jonas is very talented. You can see it in a rider you've never worked with before in one thing: if you put him on a bike for the first time and he's fast. We saw him during the first test with Jonas just after the Valencia Grand Prix in 2016, for his discovery of a MotoGP machine. »
Photo © Tech3
Source: Sharleena Wirsing for Speedweek. com