What did the Ténéré Spirit Experience bring you during the Transanatolia?

With the Yamaha team, we go into more detail, there’s more support for the rider, and you can really concentrate on getting on your bike, doing your race, and then eating and sleeping.
There’s still a gap between what you might call an ‘amateur’ assistance team and an assistance team like for the Ténéré Spirit Expérience, where there are really professionals there to serve the riders. In the morning, before you set off, the mechanics will give you just the fuel you need to complete your stage, so you have a lighter bike virtually all the time.
Between stages, there’s a Yamaha assistance truck waiting for you: you arrive, and it’s a bit like when a Formula 1 driver arrives, the bike is put on a stand straight away, everything is checked, if there’s been a breakage, it’s repaired, your mask is cleaned, you’re given food if you’re hungry, you set off again and it’s so good.
It’s full of little things that make a big difference to the experience because it’s super comfortable. Everything is done so that you don’t have any distracting thoughts. With the Ténéré Spirit Expérience team, everything is written down on a little piece of paper, and you have all kinds of information: your start time, the length of the stages, the length of the liaison sections, where we’re going to meet you, and that changes everything!

Did you appreciate the advice and management?

In any case, I’m very good at listening to people and learning from their experience.
But yes, it brings you a lot. In fact, Marc has a lot of experience in this world, in competition and in rallying, and he has a certain sensitivity to people, he’ll have measured and fairly well calculated words, fairly brief, and that works really well with me. He’ll give you a piece of advice, for example, about your day when he sees that you could potentially get into a tussle with your team-mate, and he’ll say to you: ‘Today, cool, okay you’re fighting, but don’t go and get yourself into a hole!’ He also gives a lot of advice on how to ride the bike. It’s a big, high-performance bike, but you have to adapt your riding to it. He was a great help with that too.

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