How MotoGP Team Principal Lucio Cecchinello Handles Pressure at 220 MPH |
How MotoGP Team Principal Lucio Cecchinello Handles Pressure at 220 MPH
Pressure doesn’t break teams. Poor preparation does.
BY CHRISTOPHER CASON, JOURNALIST & CREATIVE STRATEGIST COVERING SPORTS, BUSINESS, AND LEADERSHIP
LCR Honda team principal Lucio Cecchinello. Photos: Courtesy subject; Adobe Stock
For most people, pressure shows up as a moment. Something breaks. A decision needs to be made. Time compresses. In the world of MotoGP, with speeds reaching over 220 mph, those moments are often. They’re visible, immediate, and usually unforgiving.
After more than three decades in the sport, LCR Honda team principal Lucio Cecchinello doesn’t think of pressure as something separate from the work. He thinks about what’s underneath it.
Most of the work happens before it matters.
From the outside, racing looks reactive. Conditions change, situations shift, and decisions happen quickly. That’s not how Cecchinello describes it.
“Preparation is bigger,” he told Inc. ahead of the US Grand Prix. “I would say 80% is preparation, and then 20% is the ability of the team to manage the situation.”
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That ratio shows how the team operates. The emphasis isn’t improvisation. It’s about reducing what needs to be improvised. The focus is on controlling variables early before they become problems later. Under pressure, there’s less to figure out.
Mistakes stay. So do the lessons.
Things go wrong in racing — crashes, miscommunication, and misjudgments. The reaction isn’t to eliminate mistakes, but to understand them.
“I don’t care very much if you made a mistake,” Cecchinello said. “I care more that you understand why.”