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Tuesday Conversation: World Endurance Racer Will Gruy
April 28, 2009 by CJ
Filed under Tuesday Conversation
Will Gruy isn’t the first name that comes to mind when you think of American road racers competing in world championships, but he’s got a great story nonetheless. A student at the University of Rome, the Texas native also finds time to compete in World Endurance for the Amadeus X-One team. We checked in with him via email to see how things are going.
Will Gruy (center) with his Amadeus X-One teammates prior to the start of the first World Endurance race of 2009. Courtesy of Amadeus X-One.
RRX: Tell us a little about your background.
Will Gruy: I am from Dallas, Texas. I started riding dirt bikes when I was 7. At 10, I wanted to start racing, but my parents wouldn’t let me. Then at 15, I started racing with the Texas Mini Grand Prix and then with the Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association. Let’s just say my mother wasn’t overly impressed.
How did you end up in Italy?
I’ve been living in and out of Italy my whole life. My parents lived north of Rome before I was born. I am the only child of three who did not attend high school in Rome. I stayed in Texas for high school because I could go riding every weekend and I didn’t know how to organize that in Italy. When I graduated from high school, I wanted to come to University in Italy for a lot of reasons, but I was not willing to stop riding competitively. So I made a deal with myself, one year at University in Rome and if by the end of that year I didn’t find a ride I would come back to the States and ride AMA. Long story short, I found a ride.
How do you enjoy life over there?
I really do enjoy it over here. I’m a foreigner—always will be—and I like that. For some absurd reason, it feels more natural this way. I go to an International University in Rome, so I get a unique balance between paddock life with the Italian team and the life of a student at a small University in Rome.
Gruy stops for fuel and a rider change during the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Courtesy of Amadeus X-One.
How did you originally hook up with your team?
Originally I got a ride in 2006 with Team Trasimeno in the European Superstock 600 championship. These races run with World Superbike. For 2007, I had a few offers to ride World Superstock 1000, but for a variety of reasons decided to ride World Endurance instead. I met my World Endurance team through the technical director at Team Trasimeno.
Describe how your team operates.
The team owner/manager is Maurizio Bargiacchi from Pistoia (Florence area), Italy. The team owns a workshop and employs two full-time mechanics to do all the in-house work and organization. The two main riders are myself and Paolo Tessari, an ex-125 and 500 Grand Prix rider. We have had a few different third riders over the last few years. I usually spend a few months a year in Pistoia learning how the team runs, deals with sponsors and expenses, and basic organization. The team is very closely knit and has a lot of potential, which is the primary reason I have stayed with this team (not to mention that we bring an Italian cook to all the races!).
How is the Endurance world championship to race in?
Endurance is a distinctive type of racing, and hence the paddock is made up of an array of teams that approach racing with a different mentality than a World Superbike team would. For starters, I’ve found that there is less money but more passion for racing in the World Endurance paddock. The teams seem to be more internally unified, like families rather than businesses. As a world championship, it’s not organized wonderfully. In 2007, the championship lost its promoter and the FIM has been doing all the promoting. The FIM isn’t a promoter though, so they can only do so much. The FIM has done a great job in stepping in and acting as a promoter, but the championship really needs a separate entity to promote it. Without Dorna, MotoGP would be nothing; without Infront Motorsports, World Superbike would be nothing; without a promoter, World Endurance will find it hard to grow.
According to Gruy, the atmosphere in the World Endurance paddock is more family-like than in other series. Courtesy of Amadeus X-One.
How did the 24 Hours of Le Mans go?
Le Mans is magical. A whole winter of training, organizing, sponsor-signing, winter testing, and anticipation hits the fan, and it’s finally time to open the gas—for twenty-four hours, in front of a huge French crowd. This year we came to Le Mans already significantly behind where we wanted to be. We had a lot of problems over the winter. We were only able to have one winter test, in which the rear axle broke on me. The day was burned trying to fix the problem. We were slow in all the pre-race sessions, trying to understand how to set up a 2009 Yamaha R1 that has nothing in common with the 2008. It rained for twenty-one hours—and forty-five minutes of the race—and our bike was horrible in the rain. We were secured in the top ten overall until at about 4 a.m., when our French rider, Anthony Dos Santos, had a high-side in the final part of the track. We lost a total of about twenty-five minutes and many positions. Then at 10:30 a.m., the rear axle broke on me, again! Luckily, I was able to slowly ride the bike back to the pits, and we lost about eight minutes. In the end, we finished thirteenth overall and ninth in the EWC “Superbike” premier class. We were happy with the result because it was a difficult race with the rain and the untested bike, but we were a bit disappointed because we were capable of arriving in the top five or six.
What are the team’s plans for this season?
We were planning on doing a lot of non-World Endurance races such as the 24 hours of Barcelona and some European Endurance races, but with the credit crunch, we’ll just have to see. As for our World Endurance program, we think we can do very well this year. The bike has a lot of potential, and the crew is committed to their work. We have all the ingredients for a great season.
What are your personal plans and goals for the future?
To do whatever it takes to stay in the saddle. In May of 2010, I graduate from University with a degree in Humanistic Studies and a minor in English Literature. My life is going to change drastically after that date. Whatever I do in the future, a motorcycle will hopefully be involved in one way or another. As for the immediate future, I really hope to grow as a rider and help build the team into one of the top World Endurance entries. Eventually, I would like to attend graduate school, but that’s a few years off and the further into the future you look, the blurrier ideas become.
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