Going into the 2020 MotoGP season, everyone knew that Suzuki had made steps forward during winter with its new bike, and that its line-up Joan Mir and Alex Rins was going to be a force to be reckoned with when the COVID-delayed year finally got the chance to kick off.
However, few expected the duo to be as incredibly fast as they turned out to be.
Competitive at almost every circuit despite a bit of a rocky start to the year at Jerez and Brno, it didn’t take long for the pair to establish themselves as title contenders – and for Mir to eventually pull clear and take home the 2020 championship.
But while it might have come as a surprise to many inside and out of the paddock to see the GSX-RR quite so fast and scooping the titles there’s one man who wasn’t shocked at all – Suzuki’s test rider and often overlooked secret weapon Sylvain Guintoli.
The 2014 World Superbike champion has been a key part of the Suzuki MotoGP set-up since 2017 when he picked up a test and reserve role alongside his Suzuki seat in the British Superbike championship.
Guintoli was almost immediately getting thrown into the deep end as a replacement for the injured Rins at his home race at Le Mans – where he scored a point in his first MotoGP appearance in six years, nine seasons on from the end of his full-time grand prix career.
Since then he’s not only been a regular MotoGP wildcard but also become closer to a regular team member than the occasional test rider that many of his counterparts at other factories are. He’s very much become a part of Suzuki’s racing family.
And, with up-close experience of working with both Rins and Mir, the championship success was no shock at all to him.
“I’m not surprised,” Guintoli tells The Race.
“We had a slow start in the races because of Alex’s injuries, and to be honest Joan just had some bad luck.
“But we knew from the momentum [of 2019] and with the new chassis and engine we validated in Sepang [testing] that we had made some good steps.
“The start of the season was frustrating for everyone, because we knew that the potential was there. The lap times were really consistent, and even on time attack mode we were fast. So it wasn’t a surprise, but it was still really great to see them both at the front.
“It was a surprise at some places like Austria, though. We were expecting to struggle a bit there, and were ready to take it on the chin because of the nature of the track – but it wasn’t the case! The bike was really strong, for both of them.”
In fact, the speed at places like Austria’s Red Bull Ring was the first indicator to the rest of us just how strong Suzuki had become.
At a track where Ducati – a bike at the opposite end of the design philosophy scale to the Suzuki – has dominated, Suzuki was not only competitive but was set to have won with Mir if the race hadn’t been red-flagged and restarted.
“The bike is just really well balanced and rounded,” explains Guintoli. “There are a lot of very strong qualities and not many places where it is struggling.
“It’s a very complete bike, and of course the most important thing is that we’ve got two riders who are freakishly fast.
“They’re really strong mentally too, which makes a massive difference. We say it all the time, but it’s true – everything is well put together.
“The bike was already really strong from the year before, and Alex had two victories, but with the new chassis and engine, everything worked better everywhere.”
That comes in large part due to the hard work that British-based Frenchman Guintoli put in before the start of the season.
Though unable to commit to a full testing programme thanks to the pandemic, he was still able to get key miles under his belt before the start of the year.
And, with development largely frozen for 2021 as a cost-saving measure, he knows that it leaves Suzuki in an ideal position for a title defence.
“I did a lot of riding at the start of the year, six days in Sepang that really helped us to work on some major items like the new chassis,” he recalls.
“The engine was in the really final phases of development by then, but we worked a lot on the new shock there too. There was a lot done there, but since then I’ve done a lot less, just Misano and Portimao.
“With the rules, we’re not going to see a huge step [for 2021], but in saying that development is still ongoing.
“There was still some new stuff that I tested in both Misano and Portimao, and we’re still working hard at it within the limitations. It looks like the bike is working well everywhere, and it’s great that we’re going to be on a similar package again.”
Guintoli’s feedback isn’t just hugely valuable to the engineers back in Japan, but also to Mir and Rins – who always discuss Guintoli as if he is their full-time team-mate and part of the family, which he finds a real honour.
“I wish I could be as fast at the two of them!” the 38-year-old jokes.
“But in general, what’s true is that what I normally find positive or interesting, they like when I pass it on.
“I can’t think of one case where they’ve said ‘no actually we don’t like that.’
“That’s good because it means we feel like we need the same stuff, and because there’s consistency now there is some trust too.
“I think this is really good for the riders because it means that when they get something updated and they know it’s gone through this process of having me assess it and back-to-back testing it, everything that we do, they know that when they finally get it, it’s almost ready to go.
“That’s quite uplifting for a rider too. Obviously the parts make a difference, but so does that atmosphere, and the process is going very well for us.
“It’s pretty cool to hear them talk about me almost like a team-mate, because the reality is that there’s no way I could win this thing – I am not fast enough for this shit!
“I’m fast but they are a different kind of fast!
“It’s nice to be a part of it, and it corresponds really well with the phase I’m at right now.
“This is what I can bring, and you have to be really happy with it. It’s fantastic to be a part of it, and to hear Alex or Joan saying nice things about the work that we put in gives you a lot of satisfaction.
“Even though they do the hard work on a Sunday, there’s this work behind the scenes, just like the mechanics or the engineers back in Japan.”
That attitude is one that’s pervasive throughout the Suzuki camp, too. Much has already been written this year about the atmosphere that now-former team boss Davide Brivio has managed to instill in the team, but even a veteran rider like Guintoli says he feels they’re onto something special.
Perhaps even more importantly, he’s also in agreement with Brivio in attributing a lot of 2020’s successes to 2017’s disaster season.
Relying on Andrea Iannone to select its sealed engine for the year, Suzuki went in the wrong direction and suffered badly – but learned even more from the experience than the realisation that it needed a steady pair of hands like Guintoli’s leading its test team.
“What you have there is the work ethic of a full factory team, this rigorous way of working where everyone is very determined like they always are in a full factory team,” says Guintoli.
“It’s so well organised. But there’s also this friendliness, this outsider spirit.
“Suzuki are still coming up, and we’re in this place where it feels like it’s all just taking off.
“I think they’re in a place where they don’t even realise how strong they are, because it’s still in that phase – but that phase is very uplifting.
“The team is very well managed, and that atmosphere has always been there, even in the difficult moments like 2017. I’ve never seen anyone not sticking together, even in the hard times.
“That makes a team, because when you can handle the team and the men when things aren’t going well, when you can keep your chins up and keep the solidarity, then when things get better you get what you have now.
“Sometimes you need tough times to appreciate the good ones. When you only have good times, the bad times feel like the end of the world, and that’s probably what’s happening right now elsewhere.”
