A childhood promise brought them together in the MotoGP paddock. Today Thomas van Leeuwen is one of Jack Miller’s most trusted allies
Tell us about your work with Jack.
At the track, I try to organise everything for him. That can involve a wide variety of things, from filling the fridge with the food he needs and keeping track of his appointments to breaking in his new race suits. Nowadays, Jack spends less time in the pit box because there is much more PR and social media work to do.
We are all familiar with seeing rider assistants transporting MotoGP riders through the paddock on their scooters. You do that too?
No, or rarely. Jack doesn’t need a chauffeur and doesn’t mind being stopped once in a while for an autograph or a selfie. But my job is much more to ensure that he hardly has to do anything, so that he can just concentrate fully on the racing.
How does your race weekend start?
Usually that’s on a Wednesday, at the airport where I make sure to arrive before him so I can be ready with the rental car. We travel to the circuit together. If his wife (Ruby) comes along too, the car is packed to the brim with luggage. On the way, we do our shopping for the motorhome, so Jack has exactly the food he loves and needs.
Where do you actually sleep during the race weekend?
We used to always sleep together in his motorhome. But now that Jack is married and they have a child (Pip), I sleep in a hotel.
I assume there is some kind of dressing room for Jack in one of the race trucks here?
We are sitting in it right here, Peter. Are you paying attention? Look. Here you can see the four extra race suits, over there the boots, and underneath those the various helmets. In here, Jack can stretch, warm up, get dressed and concentrate. I make sure that at least two of every suit here have been worn by Jack before. That way, if there is a crash where his race suit gets too badly damaged, there is always a ‘broken-in’ suit available.
How do you handle that with new suits? Is Jack, like quite a few other riders, not a fan of them either?
No no, absolutely not! Just as little as new boots and gloves, for that matter. So I make sure there are always pre-used sets ready. I do even have one set ready behind the scenes in the pit box, by the way. If there is very little time, it saves him the running back and forth to the truck.
The current MotoGP bikes are heavier to handle and riders cannot afford to be overweight. Have you become a nutrition expert by now, too?
Not really. Fortunately, the team does have a nutritionist on staff. Based on blood values, etc, he determines what nutrition Jack needs to take at the moment. That is also something I help him with, ensuring he takes the right thing at the right time. Additionally, on the advice of his trainer, we now work with a sort of ice bath every weekend. That is still quite new here, so I can’t tell you any more about it.
I see you making notes yourself in the pit box during the practice sessions. What’s that about?
I am noting down the sectors where Jack is losing time in, or where he is far from constant. That way, he knows where to concentrate on when he heads back out on track a few minutes later.
You two became friends when Jack first came over to Europe, in Germany and Spain. Tell me more.
We were still very young and rode in the same class (125cc two-strokes), and always had a lot of fun together. That’s why Jack often stayed at our house between races during that period. We would sleep in my bedroom. I remember once seeing Casey Stoner riding on TV and saying to each other, “Wow, what would it be like to ride a racing bike like that?” When I think back on that now, I realise again how incredibly wonderful it is to have been able to experience this together for so long.
When exactly did Jack ask you to come and help him as a personal assistant?
Well, we had actually kind of forgotten about it, but when we were very young we had talked about it once before, fantasising like the children we were. We promised each other that if one of us would make it to MotoGP, the other would help him. And funnily enough, that came true when Honda asked Jack to make the switch from Moto3 straight into MotoGP, for 2015. He was living alone in Europe at the time and needed help – because at the time, everything suddenly became so much more serious.
Sometimes it’s better to keep work and private life separate, but for you two that doesn’t seem to be a problem at all.
That’s right. But then again, we really understand each other perfectly; we are true friends. Now that we are older and both have wives and children, you could also describe us as brothers. That is also independent of careers. Those can go up and will go down. But in the end, friendship remains forever.
