Every year, before the season’s start, the LCR Team Manager Lucio Cecchinello and his collaborators work diligently to be ready for the season’s kick off and the amount of work related to a racing team is vast. Starting from the renewal of the collaborators’ contracts to the infrastructures maintenance, from the new bike set up to the Team Presentation Media Kit and so on… Every single Team department must respect the targets and the time limit in order to be on track for the first GP of the season which will take place in Qatar on the 11th of April this year again.
Together with the Team Manager Lucio Cecchinello we want to deepen one of the technical and imaginative aspects of this job related to De Puniet’s RC212V … or rather the livery creation.
Lucio Cecchinello: “The winter time is a very tough period for me and the Team collaborators. Every single department fixes its own targets but the time is short as the Championship starts in April. Amongst the several works we face to prepare the Team we have to consider the graphic aspect which define the Team, the rider and the bike’s image for the incoming season”.
Which procedure do you carry out to “dress up” the bike?
L. Cecchinello: “After having set the contracts with our supporters, we usually start working on the bike layout fixing the logos dimensions and positioning together with a main colour which will stand out our bike image amongst the others. In 2006 we have created a special Australian livery for Stoner and that was a very successful feedback for us. Recently we have focused our work on the number plate using the fluo colour and last year we have prepared a special layout for the wheels colour. Together with the Graphic Department we study several combinations to make the bike more attractive and more visible on TV”.
Once you have settled the layout, how do you proceed?
L. Cecchinello: “Every year the Manufacturers come out with new features including the fairings. With the support of our technicians we measure the complete fairing trying to adapt the layout we have planned before in every single part: the front, the back, both sides and the fuel tank. Once we have completed the graphic rendering with our supporters’ approval, we start with a new work phase tracing the bike with the adhesive tape and afterwards the fairing is ready to be painted“.
Please give us some details about the GP machines fairings.
L. Cecchinello: “The colouring process is long and laborious. First the carbon fairings are handmade treated and then they are painted with special water dyes of different colours. After 2 days and many work phases including the drying process, the fairings are ready and we put the stickers on. These carbon fairings are very light (one complete set weigh about 2.2kgs) and for this reason, in case of crash, they are not very strong. But if the damage is not big we can repair them even if this process is very delicate because if you ride a bike at 350km/h you get a lot of vibrations“.
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