From rusty mopeds to MotoGP, Tech3 owner Herve Poncharal’s wild, four-decade ride has reached its end
Herve, you’re selling Tech3 and retiring after 40 years in the paddock. How does it feel?
It’s the beginning of a new era. Clearly the world of sports is much more competitive now, so either you stay at the same level, which means you will go down, or you fight with the other sports to be at the top. I was one of the actors in MotoGP from the 1980s to now. I enjoyed it a lot and now I pass the baton.
The new owners of Tech3 will keep the name, so it will always be my baby. I will help them with advice and I wish them luck. They will keep the same base (in the south of France), they will keep the same staff for the moment and I will always follow them and MotoGP with a special love and passion.
How did your passion for motorcycles start?
When I was very young, me and my brothers were always on our bicycles, racing each other. We found an old moped in the garage of a neighbour, who said, ‘Do whatever you want with it.’ So then me and my friends were racing mopeds around the small streets of our village and we started following motorcycle racing in the magazines.
In the 1960s and 1970s, rock and roll and motorcycles were very much linked and these were the two things I liked the most. I wanted to be a rock star or a motorcycle racer.
At that time my big heroes were Peter Gabriel and Barry Sheene. I quickly understood that I didn’t have anything to be a rock star, so I thought maybe it’s easier to be Barry Sheene than to be Peter Gabriel. Racing became the passion of my life.
How did your early career progress?
I was fast, but skint, so I took a job in Honda France’s racing department, working on their endurance and Dakar projects. When I stopped racing I was bitter, but I never regretted my new life. The more top riders I met, the more I realised I wasn’t made for racing. My goal was the rock and roll lifestyle – freedom, like my heroes, whether they were racers or rock stars… girls with flowers on their heads in the fields… make love, not war. This was who we wanted to be.
You entered GP racing in the 1980s. What was the paddock like then?
When Rothmans started sponsoring Honda France, I knew anything was possible. Our first year, Dominique Sarron finished P3. There were four or five of us in the team, with a small van and caravan behind. Sometimes you applied for a ride at a grand prix and didn’t even hear from the organisers, so you travelled to the circuit, waited outside and asked the representative of your national federation to ask the promoters to accept your entry. Grands prix had free practice on Thursdays, sometimes you wouldn’t get a ride until Saturday, so you’d camp outside the circuit, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
It was still the Continental Circus, so sometimes we were on the road for three months and loving it. Small campervans, caravans, all driving together from one track to the next, throwing eggs and rotten tomatoes at each other on the autoroute, then stopping for the night – barbecues, swimming in lakes…
It was very rock and roll. We never made plans. We raced, then went home for the winter and tried to find the possibility of doing it again the next year. I’d say grands prix stayed full rock and roll until around 1995. We were all living our dreams.
Tech3 grew from there into a full MotoGP operation. How did that happen?
We didn’t go from four people to 50 overnight, it grew step by step. We went from a van to a truck and from a truck to an artic. Running a business of 50 people is very demanding. I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights, so sometimes I used to wonder, what am I doing? But I’ve enjoyed it a lot. I love a challenge and I’ve always been a kind of entrepreneur.
We had to become more professional and market the sport better to get more sponsors, because if you have 50 staff you want to pay them a decent salary. It’s been a different challenge to being a teenager and going from one track to the next with your friends, playing guitar by the fire! I still love the racing – every time I’m on a starting grid I get goosebumps and my heart is racing.
How do you see MotoGP evolving without you?
To me, even now, motorcycle racing is rock and roll. And this is how motorcycle racers should be. Cal (Crutchlow) was an absolute rebel. You have to be a rebel. Marc Marquez is a kind of rebel. He has to be politically correct to cope with what the sponsors and manufacturers want, but the way he rides, he’s a rebel on the track, an absolute animal! I think Pedro Acosta is also a rebel. In my heart I’m very close to that way myself, but I’ve had to run my company, report to my partners, so I had to be very correct in what I said.
What will retirement look like for you?
Ninety per cent of my life has been racing. Now I’m ready to embrace what I’ve never done – kill time, do nothing! Just go out with friends, on our bicycles, with a picnic, watching the sun rising and setting. I’ve been competing all my life and my heart is maybe a bit tired. All my life has been hectic. I’ve been racing against time, so now I want to chat with the people I love, without looking at my watch.
Looking back, what will you remember most about your career?
I think we lived the best years in the paddock. I don’t want to be the old guy who says everything was better before, but for me, life was better before.
More fun, more rock and roll, more free.
