Between the Races: Simon Buckmaster

Ex-racer Simon Buckmaster took the reins as team manager of the privateer Parkalgar Honda World Supersport team at the beginning of 2008, a year that saw a shake-up of the team following the fatal racing accident at Brands Hatch circuit that claimed their star rider, the late Craig Jones. For 2009, Parkalgar Honda signed young Irishman Eugene Laverty, who made an impression on the championship right from the start. Scoring four wins, four podiums, and finishing second in the championship, Parkalgar Honda missed the title by only seven points, trouncing the factory Honda team in the process. With the same rider line-up in place for next year, Buckmaster and his team have just one goal: to win the World Supersport title.

What sort of expectations did you have for your team at the beginning of this season?
I was confident in Eugene [Laverty]’s ability to be a contender, but that was it. I’d say that we achieved equal or above our expectations for the season, for both Eugene and Miguel [Praia]. For instance, Miguel scored fourteen points in 2008 and forty in 2009. We won more races than any other Honda team, so I think it’d be fair to say that whilst I had strong expectations for our performance in 2009, Eugene and everybody altogether in the team exceeded those expectations.

Laverty finished ahead of both of the factory Hannspree Ten Kate Honda riders. That has to mean a lot for a privateer team like Parkalgar Honda.
Yeah, it does. We’ve won more races than Ten Kate, and finished in front of them in the championship, so for sure it means a lot.

What enables your team to go out there and repeatedly beat a factory team like Ten Kate?
Well, we’ve had a lot of support from Honda as well, and we appreciate that, but a big improvement has been made this year with the suspension from Ohlins, where we had a factory deal. We also had factory support with MoTeC for the ECU, datalogging, fuel mapping, traction control strategy, and all the other stuff.

And there’s the fact that we all worked very well together as a team unit, to make it all happen as a team. I’d say that we operated at probably half the budget—or less even—of Ten Kate or Yamaha, and we took the fight to them. So I’d say that as a team, we did a better job than any other team.

Your team’s title sponsor is Portimao’s Parkalgar circuit. Winning the last round of the championship there must have been especially significant.
It’s fantastic! We won the race, we had pole position…. It’s a good reward for [Parklalgar circuit and team owner] Paolo Pinheiro for his backing of our team. To finish the season like that for Eugene and all the boys, all the mechanics, everybody that works for and supports the team, it’s just a fantastic end to the year. We missed the championship by seven points, and obviously we’d like to have won it, but as I said at the start, we did achieve above our expectations, and we’ll be back to win it next year.

Speaking of that Parkalgar sponsorship, it’s not a typical arrangement to have a circuit sponsor a team. How and why did that come about?
Back in the end of 2007 [and the beginning of] 2008, when Craig Jones was still alive, the conversation started then, when the circuit wasn’t even built. Paulo Pinheiro, who owns Parkalger, wanted to have a race team of his own and also wanted a tool or module to promote the circuit as it’s being built. That’s how it came about, really—through his passion for the sport and his belief that it would be a positive promotion of his racetrack.

As a privateer team, how do your costs compare with those of a factory team?
Well, we did it on a million euros, give or take a bit. Obviously, for me to say half you’d have to ask them, but I know they’re on a much higher budget; exactly their budgets, I’m not in a position to say that. What we achieved on a million euros is mega; we spent our budget very wisely and did the job we needed to do.

What effect, if any, did the removal of the Friday morning practice session have on your team this season?
None—it’s the same for everybody. For me personally, I was a big supporter of that, from the point of view of cost-cutting. Yeah, the Friday morning practice is gone, but the Friday afternoon session is an hour long, not forty-five minutes. My opinion, in reality, is that the loss of track time to set your bike up for a race is minimal. It was the same for everybody, and again I don’t think it affected us at all. My team worked well to optimize the track time we had and get our rider into a race-winning position at the start of the race, which we did.

Do you think there should be more cost-cutting measures implemented, or have the steps taken thus far been enough?
I think in a lot of ways that the cost-cutting method, as it was, was more political than anything. I think that a better cost-cutting exercise is to ban testing—that’s where you’ll get your money. There were no restrictions on testing this year, and Yamaha did a hell of a lot of testing, which forced us into a position where we had to test. In my personal opinion, there should be four practice sessions again—only timed and three un-timed still—and no testing. That would be the most cost effective way to go racing. That’s my opinion, but it’s not my decision; it’s up to Infront if they agree with that or not.

How do you think the Moto2 class will affect World Supersport?
I don’t really, from where I’m sitting, [though] obviously I’m not in MotoGP. It’ll be interesting to see if all those teams actually make the grid from the start, as there are no engines until next March. I do think it’ll be a good class; it’ll be quite exciting to watch because the electronics are very restricted. They’ll probably be as exciting, or more exciting, to watch than MotoGP bikes, because they’ll back into corners and they’ll slide on the way out, as they haven’t got a lot of electronics to stop it.

I’ll be surprised if they go around a track as fast as WSS bikes, to be honest. For the case of Honda, the CBR600RR is a fantastic package, and the advantage that they’ll get from lighter wheels and better forks will be ruled out by our superior electronics packages. I’ll be very surprised in most cases if they go around faster than WSS bikes.

Do you think there will be a drain of talent from WSS to Moto2, in terms of riders and engineers?
MotoGP is fairly insular. For example, we did make inquiries about the possibility if we went to Moto2, but we wouldn’t even be considered because we weren’t a current team. I think in some ways there may be some sort of agreement between Infront and Dorna to not do that. From my point of view, if Moto2 turns into a really successful class and riders are seen to go from WSS to Moto2, then to MotoGP.… I mean, MotoGP is really the pinnacle of motorcycling, and if WSS is seen as a breeding ground for MotoGP styles, then it’s only a positive thing for the WSS championship.

What’s your team’s goal for 2010?
To win the world championship. I mean, it has to be, doesn’t it? We finished second this year, and we’re going to improve our package. Don’t get me wrong, I know that Ten Kate is a very, very good team and I do expect them to come back stronger and fight harder, but I expect us to do the same. I don’t think it will be easy, but that has to be our aim: to win the world championship.

Our main fight is going to be from Ten Kate, obviously, and Kawasaki, because I think that Joan Lascorz is an excellent rider as well. They’ll improve their bikes, we’ll improve our bike, and the world champion is going to come from one of those three teams. Hopefully, it’s going to be us.