'I learned technical things, I learned riding, and I also learned business'

Aki Ajo is the most successful team boss in the MotoGP paddock. Over the past decade or so he has guided Marc Márquez, Johann Zarco, Brad Binder, Pedro Acosta, and others to world championship glory. So, what is his secret? Excerpts from an interview

- Mat Oxley 

'THAT WAS THE time I called my university! grins Aki Ajo, recalling how it all started. 'Because I learned technical things, I learned riding, and I also learned business."

The 58-year-old Finn is remembering his self-styled university education, when he was II years old.

'I started making business with mopeds, as a way to buy a motocross bike. My parents were afraid of me getting a motorcycle because I was a bit wild, but they allowed me to buy cheap mopeds, service them, fit parts, and advertise them in the local paper. Then parents would come with their kids to buy my mopeds.

When I was 14, I had enough money to buy my first motocross bike: a 1977 Honda CR125 Elsinore. That's how it started, riding my motocross bike around the forests where we lived. Now I have an Elsinore in my team's museum!'

Finnish stereotypes suggest Finns are dour and emotion-free but Ajo burns with enthusiasm while talking about his life in motorcycles at 200 miles an hour. He is hopelessly in love with the things, just like the rest of us, and has been ever since a cousin gave him a ride on the fuel-tank of a Honda CB500 when he was a wee lad.

His father was also into engines and wheels, rallying and ice-racing a Mini Cooper and a Sunbeam Imp, but after that CB500 ride Ajo's desire burned only for two wheels.

'When I was 13, I was a road race mechanic, working on a family friend's Yamaha TZ250, taking off the cylinders, the pistons, everything. I was so enthusiastic! I was a complete addict, especially at that time. When I was 16, I did my first races in motocross and ice-racing, then I was really hot for a road race bike."

Ajo raced a Honda RS125 for his own team, Team Santa Claus, in the Scandinavian and European championships for several years and had a wild card ride in the 1993 Austrian 125-cc Grand Prix. Then, as so often happens in this cruellest of sports, his life changed.