It had all been going so swimmingly for MXGP star Romain Febvre. The Frenchman had been forcefully ejected from MX2 Grand Prix prominence and into the premier class of the FIM Motocross World Championship by virtue of 24 hours – his 23rd birthday was on December 31st 2014 and thus he ‘aged out’ – and the circle of fate hurriedly turned in the slight, friendly but unassuming athlete’s favour. 2015 was sensational. Febvre blasted MXGP, and became the first rookie champion and the first for Yamaha since 2009.
His attacking speed and confidence caught the division by surprise and the Belgium resident carried on the momentum during the first phase of 2016 as he filled the role as the only challenger to the equally lively Tim Gasjer. The British Grand Prix came and went and so did Febvre’s chances of a title defence due to a crash and concussion in qualification. The ’16 Motocross of Nations was claimed again for the three-man tricolour squad with Romain again in the team and business seemed back on track.
2017 has been a mystery however. Monster Energy Yamaha’s flagship signing was misfiring and groping in the dark, fumbling for results, feeling and a search for a cure to the podium-less streak in arguably the toughest field seen in MXGP this century. Rookies like Max Anstie, Arnaud Tonus and Jeffrey Herlings were coating the podium with champagne and it looked like Febvre was already drifting to the sidelines to be replaced by a another surge of talent all before his 26th birthday.
#461’s predicament of slipping from MXGP leader to top ten-middler was a classic case of confidence-crisis and an athlete losing his way and trying a myriad of solutions to rediscover the mojo. Therefore there were few bigger smiles on the MXGP rostrum this year at the recent Grand Prix of Sweden where Febvre finally broke through the malaise and grabbed his first trophy in a year and first moto victory in fourteen months. The toil behind the scenes had been rewarded and spoils eagerly savoured.
Sitting down to interview the popular but often stern racer was a delicate matter. It is fairly obvious that he has faced a singular line of enquiry since the launch of the FIM World Championship in Qatar: what went wrong? Mindful of the fact that it is a riddle the racer has himself puzzled over together with his team as well as dealing with the interest and sympathy of fans; chatting with Romain is also like also being aware of an elephant sitting too comfortably in the corner of the Yamaha awning. Searching for a subject other than his struggles in 2017 and how he is trying to become the principal blue blur of MXGP again feels like skirting around the issue. Sweden proved that the end is in sight however so we wondered if he might be able to dissect the method of ‘the comeback’…
You must have become pretty tired of everyone’s questions and concerns this year…
Yeah! But it’s normal. Everyone knew I won the championship and then everything was good last year until my crash and then the end of the season was good again. So for sure this year has not been easy. I don’t tend to spend much time or attention on all the people questioning aspects of what I am doing. It is normal that people see I am struggling and want to know why. Even if you do everything well then you’ll still have people examining what you do. I don’t really care.
What about the process of turning things around? How do you find confidence and form again? Is it done in your head? In the gym? With the team?
Mentally, when you feel good in practice then it transfers across. When I’m comfortable in practice then I know I’m OK. It is just a matter of time. This winter I was really good and managed to follow my plan exactly as I wanted. Then the early crash I had at a pre-season race in Italy gave me a painful neck and it took some time to heal from that. I didn’t lose my confidence but I did step back a little bit and rode a bit slower. The season started quickly and we saw during those first motos that I was struggling with the bike and without that crash in Italy maybe we would have seen that before and in the Italian Championship races. The situation was more about my neck and how I felt on the bike rather than just the bike itself. We took a while to trace the cause of the problem [that he couldn’t feel comfortable] and now it is time to move on from that and to be better next time.
Do you ever feel you were going around in a circle?
Sure. It was almost like that from the beginning. I was looking at myself and searching for the problem but it wasn’t really there. In that process I changed my training and a few other things in practice and racing and didn’t see any difference; it was probably even a bit worse every time! I was scared to make a mistake and lose the good parts I had in the package. So we had to really look around…but when we changed the bike from the German Grand Prix we found a lot of improvement. In the end it was an alteration we needed to make on the bike from something I had brought around initially. It was a big learning experience. I think we are already now looking forward to 2018 and we are working with Michele [Rinaldi, Team Principal] on the project to develop it correctly and try not to make the same mistake.
You started so well and so hot in MXGP so was this almost like a reality check? To learn more about development as a factory rider?
Yeah, it is difficult to see it like this though. ’15 was a special year and in ’16 I could have been world champion again if it wasn’t for the crash. For sure life is much easier when you have a lot of confidence and you felt great on the bike and I had that for two years. We were always starting at the front of motos and we were nearly top five every time. I could see that at every GP I could be one of the fastest and it all came together. We were ‘off’ from the beginning of this season and I missed the speed. Everything gets complicated when that happens. 2017 has been a bad year, even if it is not finished yet! We have done more testing and we keep working. The goal has been to find something that works for the start and also the riding.
What was going through your mind when you changed training methods and looked hard at yourself? Could you turn to anyone for guidance? Were you lost?
I wasn’t really lost because I knew what I had achieved in the class and how I did that and I kept the process the same. I felt I was one of the fittest riders and could do what I wanted in the motos. I didn’t change that much. I did want to change some small things…but not everything. When we had the overseas trips to Argentina and Mexico I went directly to the USA in between the GPs and trained with Ryan Hughes – he helps me with Ryno Power product – and I had the opportunity to see if he could teach me some tips and he did. Everywhere you go and with every person you work or train then you learn something new. I picked up a few things that were really good for me.
Such as?
Nothing really with cardio or bicycle work but definitely some things about core strength and some key exercises. Ryan could see I was already in good shape so we changed a few things about how I practice on the bike. It helped re-assure me of my condition because then we went to Argentina and things were getting worse with the bike. I was finishing a moto and I wasn’t physically tired but I was mentally tired: I couldn’t race like I wanted and I was putting too much pressure on myself because I didn’t know why. From that point we started looking more towards the bike.
Thinking of some bright spots of your riding in MXGP like passing Cooper Webb on the outside of one of the Glen Helen hills or winning so effortlessly at Ernee for the Motocross of Nations: are you still operating at that level this year? Is it just that people are not seeing it so much?
It is difficult out there. I think most of us in the class are improving every year. I ‘jumped on the train’ later than the others this year. Not in terms of technique but I was slowing down in the motos and dropping off while the others were pushing on and getting faster and better. I was in the opposite direction. We used the old bike in some races and I felt an improvement but then I personally had to catch-up because the level of performance is not going to hit a high ‘just like that’. Now things are going well but I still need some speed. Good starts will make life easier and we are trying to find the best compromise between starts and racing and it is not just one easy fix.
Do you think fans have difficulty to understand sometimes? I mean they could think ‘it’s a dirtbike, jump on and ride the thing…’
For sure the people who know a bit about racing can easily understand. Maybe the others think it is just about jumping on the bike. I don’t care too much. I need to be better and to show what I can do but I am riding for myself, my team and the people around me. They are the ones that need to know.
You career has surged since you whipped a 250 in MX2 and rode in Jacky Martens team in 2013 so was this a very new obstacle and challenge for you to tackle…
Yeah, with Jacky everything was good in MX2 and then I passed to Yamaha and then everything was really good. I know you have good and bad moments in your career and I hope this year is one of the worst! It is not easy and I know I must learn from it because careers are short and if you miss one year finding the right training and set-up on the bike then it is too much.
Injury is one aspect of the job but when results are not coming – what you are paid well to deliver – is this a dark side of being a professional athlete?
Yes, it is like having a bad race…but one that doesn’t stop for a long time! The worst part is not really knowing where the problem is. It was really hard. I’m happy in another way because Yamaha gave me some great support in realising that we had some sort of problem and they didn’t just leave me to figure it out by myself. They also didn’t think ‘Romain is having an off-year’ or ‘he isn’t preparing well’. The team and the guys at Yamaha Motor Europe really tried hard to problem-solve with me and it was a big help. I appreciated I had that support and I wasn’t just by myself behind the bike thinking ‘what’s going on?’
You mentioned how tough MXGP is now. Is it really that competitive? Even compared to 2015?
It has always been difficult but it seems the start of motos is now even more important. If you made a bad start a couple of years ago it felt easier to still be able to come back. For me this is the only way MXGP has changed this year because the level of competition has always been high. This year not many riders have been injured and there are more people ready to race.
The Nations takes place at Matterley Basin this year and you won your first moto on a 450 at that track in 2015: a nice little sign?
I really like Matterley but I hear the track will change a bit for the Nations. Yeah, I won my first moto there…but we can also say I lost my chance at a second title there last year! We’ll see at the Nations and I hope we can defend that trophy again.
[BOX OUT] Michele Rinaldi: “What I saw was not really surprising me”
To talk with Michele Rinaldi, former world champion (Italy’s first in the sport) Monster Energy Yamaha team’s head honcho and prolific deliverer of titles and victories, is like forming an audience with a sage pillar of MXGP. The Italian and owner of Yamaha Rinaldi Research & Development – a prime technical division devoted to the evolution of production bikes to racing material and all the resulting data and investigation that entails – has been in Yamaha blue for a quarter of a century and Febvre was his third world champion since the start of the century. Rinaldi has been there, raced, watched and endured. His opinion therefore on a difficult ‘third’ term for Romain was key to understanding what the Frenchman was negotiating. It is easy to accept Febvre as the finished deal based on the ruthlessness and versatility he demonstrated from 2015-2016 but Rinaldi was quick to remind that he is still in ‘development’ himself.
“Every season is a new season and you cannot predict how it is going to be and often an unexpected rider will start to be fast,” he says. “This causes confusion about choices, bike, form and it can affect confidence. This is part of the process for a rider to be a champion and it is the reality. Only a few riders in the world can really predict how a season will be and Romain is learning this.”
“What I saw with Romain was not really surprising me,” he adds. “The rider was unhappy and totally confused about not having perfect results. Romain is growing and improving – maybe not with his speed but in the way he is controlling his riding.”
“In 2015 Romain was an unknown quantity and approached the season in an easy way and kept that going through the year,” he reveals. “Things change and that’s a consequence of winning, being more famous, having more money and so on, so 2016 was already a bit different but then he got injured and that was a hard time for him. He spent a few months having doubts but then had a good end to the season. 2017 was again new: different riders like Herlings coming into the class, new bikes, our own modified bike according to his requests.”
Rinaldi boiled down the crux of the mismatch between bike and rider. “Romain likes a very easy engine; one that isn’t strong or hard on power delivery. So to perform well for starts, for sand and for other conditions is not that easy. We wanted to improve, modify and get closer to top performance and we were working on areas so that he’d be satisfied but then also OK for the starts. We have to be competitive from the first metre in MXGP.”
“In the past we could work in September and October for the coming season but now it is difficult because riders are improving their speed and manufacturers are working a lot as are the teams,” he continues. “You might do your autumn tests but then come to the first GPs and find that you are way-back. So you need to continuously modify and improve and this is what has changed compared to a few years ago.”
“We missed the full confidence in the choices we made in 2016 for the 2017 season and mechanically the changes didn’t help him. The changes did not work for start of the season but maybe would have worked from the middle. Things influence riders’ decisions during a season and they need to get used to this to make the right choices: this makes a champion.”