‘I started as a stunt rider, not as a racer’
WHEN CREW CHIEF PHIL MARRON STARTED working with Toprak Razgatlioglu in the run-up to the 2019 World Superbike season, he got a very big shock. Browsing through the squiggles of Razgatlioglu’s data in the Puccetti Kawasaki garage, he spotted the front-wheel speed flat-lining into corners, which means the front tyre was locking and not just at one corner, but at every corner on every lap. This suggested Razgatlioglu was having serious problems getting his ZX-10R stopped.
‘I could see on the data that the front tyre was locking and sliding across the track,’ says Marron. ‘And I don’t mean small locks, I mean massive locks! If that had been any other rider, they would’ve been screaming at me, so I asked Toprak, “This looks like a problem. Do we need to fix it?” He said, “No, this isn’t a problem. I like this feeling, I control it.” At that moment, my eyebrows nearly jumped off my head!’
‘When we both joined Yamaha [in 2020], their engineers came to me with the data after day one of pre-season testing and said, “Toprak has a big problem with the front tyre locking.” I said, “Honestly, this isn’t a problem for him.” And their eyebrows nearly jumped off their heads!’
