Part of Archie’s crew

We spoke to Nacho Artagaveytia, one of Archie McDonald’s team technicians, about working for Joe Rascal Racing and the team dynamic…

Nacho Artagaveytia, from Valencia, Spain, has been working in motorcycle racing for 10 years, including the Spanish motorcycle Grand Prix, Moto3 World Championship and now the Harley-Davidson Bagger World Cup.

“It’s the same racing world I have been used to with Moto3 and a great opportunity to learn about a new race bike from the start. It’s really interesting working with baggers because they are like Harley-Davidson^® superbikes,” he says. “Normally in bike racing we are working with full prototypes – with these baggers you can see the heritage of the stock bikes as well as the racing modifications, which makes them so great to work with.

“At first, we studied the bikes and asked the Harley-Davidson technical team lots of questions. For me, it’s my first time working on them. Now we have confidence in the bikes, they are already very fast and we know what to do to achieve their full performance potential, so in that way it’s no different to working on a normal race bike. We go out in the morning, warm the tyres and get on with testing, like with any race bike.”

For Nacho, the team is as important as the motorcycles he’s working with. “They are amazing people and great to work with because of the passion they have for racing and for these bikes in particular. You can see what it means to everyone, from the boss James, through all the staff,” he says. “It’s great to work with passionate people because racing is hard work and the Joe Rascal team makes it as easy as possible to work together.”

This interview was carried out just before the second round of the Harley-Davidson Bagger World Cup at Mugello.

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