The ‘Ogura enigma’: Why the Japanese rider has even Marquez pondering

A Japanese magazine, *Riding Sport*, asked me to write an article about how we ‘Westerners’ view Trackhouse-Aprilia ace Ai Ogura. ‘How interesting,’ I thought, and set about gathering information and speaking to various people – fans, journalists and even riders. And the conclusion I reached can be perfectly summed up in a single word, which I used in the headline: enigma.

Could it also have been ‘mystery’ or ‘mysterious’? No, because by definition a secret is something that is completely beyond rational understanding or has no obvious solution. Ogura may seem ‘strange’ to us, but he’s no Martian. I’d say Ai is exactly the opposite: he’s human, very human.

What confuses us ‘Westerners’ about Ogura is that, both on and off the racetrack, he breaks the mould of our conventional expectations. Over the past few months, I’ve written several articles about Ai. I listen to him closely every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at every Grand Prix. I’ve spoken to the race engineer who sits to his left in the pit, to his assistant, to the team manager … in other words, to the ‘Westerners’ who have the most to do with him.

What I’ve gleaned from between the lines of all these conversations is that there is a ‘professional’ Ai and a ‘private’ Ai. The ‘professional’ is the public, enigmatic Ogura – the one with the monosyllabic answers, the one with the confusingly ‘logical’ answers; the ‘other’ Ogura is the one who – in Davide Brivio’s words – jokes with the team members, the one they laugh with at the dinner table and, I suspect, the one who socialises with the other Japanese riders in the World Championship.

I remember how Taiyo Furusato admitted to me in an interview towards the end of last season that Ai is something of a big brother figure amongst the Japanese riders, his role model. As far as I know, Sasaki is another rider with whom Ai spends the most time during GP weekends.

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“I have to understand him”

I’m going to tell you a story about Ai – my story with Ai. At one point last season, I asked for an interview with Ogura, and as always, his team’s communications staff made it easy for me. They invited me into their hospitality area, and at the table sat Ai, the press officer and me. It wasn’t the first time I’d interviewed Ogura, but it was the first time during a GP weekend, as the previous interview had taken place in Madrid whilst he was recovering from his crash at the Austrian GP.

What was supposed to be just another interview for me ended with me feeling very, very annoyed. This was because Ai’s attitude towards my questions was characterised by a humiliating indifference. His answers to my questions were monosyllabic or consisted of just a few words at most.

My frustration mounted to such an extent that it eventually turned to irritation, which prompted me to ask him directly why he was making things so difficult for me, and to tell him that it would have been better not to do the interview at all if he didn’t feel like it. ‘Have you ever interviewed a Japanese driver before?’ he asked me, to which I replied that, in my 30 years as a World Championship journalist, I’d probably interviewed one or two. Yes.

That interview didn’t exactly end on the best of terms. In the end, I was very angry with Ogura – very angry indeed – because I saw it as a lack of respect for my work. But once the dust had settled, my view of the incident changed.

On the one hand, because when I asked the Trackhouse team manager what Ogura had said about it after our row, she surprisingly told me that Ai had liked it because I’d told him my opinion openly. With any other rider, believe me, that would have been the start of a ‘war’.

On the other hand, it made me rethink what had happened when Ogura’s assistant – a former World Championship mechanic whom I’ve known for many years – explained to me that, due to his mindset, Ogura doesn’t understand some of the questions we journalists usually ask him, such as: ‘How did the race go?’ For Ai, this is a purely rhetorical question that a journalist, whose job it is to follow the race, shouldn’t even be asking!

Based on these two details, I’ve set myself the goal of ‘understanding’ Ai. And that’s what I’m working on right now. I’ve made progress, even though there are still a few hurdles I need to overcome.

‘I don’t know what he’s thinking’

This statement comes from none other than Marc Márquez. It’s a very interesting remark, because Ogura is a mystery to Márquez. It’s an admission that Marc, the king of mind games, can’t quite figure out someone who is undoubtedly a title contender. And that worries him.

He knows him neither mentally nor as a rider, as he hasn’t yet come up against him on the track. He has his other rivals – Bezzecchi, Martin, Di Giannantonio, Bagnaia and so on – under control; Ogura, he does not. And in that sense, the fact that Ai lives in ‘his own world’, far removed from the hustle and bustle in which the Spanish and Italian riders find themselves, is, in my view, an advantage. We’ll see whether the fact that he’s been in the spotlight recently, surrounded by camera flashes, affects his situation.

Ogura’s breakthrough to the top of MotoGP is baffling not only the riders, but also the fans and ‘experts’. For example, nobody knows where his ceiling lies. Ai finished the first half of the championship in second place in the World Championship standings. And he did so in his own way, without causing much of a stir. Whilst the ‘GP world’ had its eyes fixed on Bezzecchi, Marc Márquez or Jorge Martín, Ogura has worked his way up step by step.

In twelve Grands Prix (Sunday races), he finished in the top five on nine occasions, and it is this consistency that sees him enter the decisive phase of the championship 37 points behind championship leader Jorge Martín. We’re all asking ourselves the same question: will Ai manage to hold his own up there? What is his potential as a rider? Will he continue to improve? These are precisely the questions we’re asking ourselves – and his rivals are asking themselves too.

A note: Whilst it’s true that ‘what-if’ questions count for nothing in motor racing, but if the engine of Ogura’s Aprilia hadn’t broken down in Austin whilst he was in fourth place, Ai would be even further ahead – that’s the sort of comment Ogura would find absurd and unfounded.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing

In Spanish, we use this metaphor to describe someone who appears harmless but is, in reality, a ‘danger’. In this case, ‘danger’ refers to his immense competitiveness.

To get some informed views on how Ogura is perceived in the West, I turned to my good friend Alex Barros, who has 276 Grands Prix under his belt. He’s one of those people you have to listen to when it comes to racing and riders.

‘Is Ogura a title contender? Why not? For me, Marquez is the clear favourite, but Ai is an unknown quantity. With Marc, we know how far he can go; with Ogura, we don’t. We now know that he’s a fantastic tyre manager – someone who struggles to find his rhythm in the opening laps, but who turns into a sort of robot as soon as the tyres give him confidence.

Ogura combines finesse perfectly with aggression. His riding style is delicate, which is why his tyres last as long as possible right to the end of the race, but when it comes to overtaking, he does so with the determination of a killer. Note that he usually loses very little time to the rider in front of him; he overtakes without hesitation … Bang, bang!

That’s why, because of his attitude on the track, I definitely see Ogura as a title contender, but I’ll emphasise once again that Marc is the favourite in my view. Ai struggles in the sprint races, as he doesn’t have time to capitalise on his advantage in tyre conservation. His other strength is his consistency, which has taken him to where he is in the overall standings. He’s only made one mistake so far this season, in Barcelona, but otherwise he’s a rider who very rarely crashes … Let’s see how he copes with the pressure in the second half of the year.”

Summary

We’ve more or less got the measure of Ogura as a rider. His strengths and weaknesses are well known – incidentally, his technician explained to us that, on paper, he struggles at the Grands Prix in Northern Europe, as it’s difficult to get the tyres up to temperature there – but his potential remains uncertain. Ogura’s ‘personality’ attracts the attention of fans and, above all, journalists, whilst it’s rather disconcerting for his rivals. And in a sport where the psychological element plays a decisive role, this uncertainty is, in my view, an asset in his favour.

And as already explained, Marc Márquez is well aware of this. From now on, therefore, we will have to pay particular attention to what Marc says about Ogura.