Season Two of the award-nominated ‘Behind the Dream’ short documentary series dives into the character most requested by viewers: Santi Hernandez.
A stalwart by Marc Marquez’s side, Santi Hernandez first began working with the #93 in 2011 when he made his Moto2 World Championship debut. Together they have won seven World Championships, six in the premier class in the prestigious Repsol Honda Team colours, Santi as the head of a tight-knit group of workers. But the Barcelona native does not see himself as the true leader of the team: “For me, the leader inside of the team is Marc. When the good or the bad things happen, he always stays there. For me, this is like a leader. I am not the leader, I mean I am part of the project but who makes the difference is Marc because at the end, when he’s on the bike, it’s him. Alone.”
2013 was not the 47-year old’s first success with the Repsol Honda Team, in 1999 he worked with Alex Criville as his suspension engineer on his way to the championship. “At the time when I worked with Alex (Crivillé) or with Valentino (RossI) it was exclusively to try to help with the suspension setup,” Santi Hernandez reflects. “My role is much more complete. Above all, the aim is to help the rider with what the suspension engineer tells you, what the tyre engineer tells you, what Honda HRC, engine and chassis engineers tell you. Organize everything with the mechanics.”
The newest chapter in the Behind the Dream series also dives into how and why ‘Santi’ came to work in MotoGP after a childhood spent adoring football. “When I was little, I liked football. But in my house, my father has been a mechanic all his life. When I was 12 years old, he gave me a motorcycle. I started to like them, and I started to ride a scooter,” he recalls. Hernandez now stands as one of the most successful ‘crew chiefs’ in MotoGP and attributes much of his success to his parents, “I would like to be 50% of my father. A person who, without studies, without having the opportunities that I have had, did it out of passion and enjoyed it and achieved what he has achieved… For me that is the advice that I take from my father and my mother, both of them.”
The full episode is available on the Honda Racing Corporation YouTube page. This is the first episode of Season Two of Behind the Dream with new installments coming once every two weeks as we explore the mechanics, engineers, riders and management of the Repsol Honda Team and beyond…