Interview: Data Acquisition & Developing Future Champions with Nick Lester - Team Manager of the Muc-Off Young Guns

This year, I'll be bringing you some of the people behind the scenes on the World Cup circuit. The teams have mechanics, team managers, and all sorts of people who make sure the riders we love to see are able to compete at the very top of the sport. This week, with Muc-Off Young Guns rider Heather Wilson taking the win at her first ever World Cup, we thought it would be a perfect time to have a chat with Nick Lester, the team manager at Muc-Off Young Guns. We talk about what he does, how he got to where he is, and why he does what he does.

Now, Nick is a pretty humble guy, but his knowledge around data acquisition and his attention to detail really set him apart from many of the people in the pits. I mean, he has a full dual-screen setup on a trolley sat in the team's pits, as well as having wiring built into the pit ready to plug the bikes in after every run. This little team means business; it's more like a motorsport pit than a junior World Cup team. So let's hear from the man himself.

Alright, Nick, give yourself a quick introduction.

I'm Nick Lester. I'm the manager of the Muc-Off Young Guns and also Heather Wilson's mechanic.

An amazing weekend for you as a team. Has it sunk in yet?

No, no, not yet. I'm pretty sure it's not really going to register until we get to Poland and we pick up the number one plate, and she's got that leader's jersey on. Then I think then it will sink in I reckon. But at the minute, I'm not quite sure what to make of it all.

Yeah it's a bit surreal right?

Yeah, I obviously had full faith in her and I knew she was going to do really well but this, this is just better than expected. Like it tops all expectations.

It's sort of an unsung hero role, team manager. How does it feel when all of that kind of stuff's going on? You're seeing Heather come down and well, you didn't see Heather come down because you're on top of the hill, right? But seeing all of it unfold in front of you, how does that feel?

It's insane. I can't describe it and that was the longest, most painful gondola ride down I've ever had. I would have loved to have been at the bottom and seen her come through. But also, it meant so much to be with her at the top and make sure that she was doing her warm up properly, she was in a good headspace, and that she just had someone there she was comfortable with. I think that was just as valuable for both of us as it would be me being at the bottom, althoughit would have been nice to have watched her run and been part of the atmosphere and all the crowd and stuff at the bottom.

Let's talk a little bit about you. How long you've been running Muc-Off Young Guns team?

This is my second season now. First one was last year, and the team was slightly smaller. We had two second year juniors. The season didn't quite start off as well as this one, but it got better. Then I sort of stuck around for another year of punishment.

I heard you saying earlier it was a tough off-season. Do you want to elaborate a bit on how tough it is as a smaller team in the off-season?

It's not the size of the team. It's just the extra stuff that I had no concept of. How much work was involved, like planning all the logistics, doing riders contracts, organizing and getting pit space designed and just every single little thing that is part of all this that I was just blissfully unaware of. And then it sort of slaps you in the face pretty quickly and then keeps slapping you. Then at some point when you get here and you start seeing all the pits up and the mechanics working and the riders coming in happy, you just think, okay, that was worth that slog through the off season.

And to top it off, you got a bike with some flowers on it and a trophy next to it.

Yeah, I mean that alone, you know I would have done that off-season 2 or 3 times over for that, that pays for everything. It's just incredible. To see Heather do it at home and on a bike she loves, it means everything.

This isn't your first rodeo in the World Cup, right? You've worked elsewhere?

I did a season with Commencal 100% with Greg Williamson and Millie Johnset. That was my first season as a World Cup mechanic, and that was a bit of a baptism of fire as well. You've got two reasonably high profile riders and I thought to myself, well, I can handle an Allen key, you know, let's have a go. And thankfully it went well. That was a steep learning curve though, but I learned so much from being in that environment. Pierre Charles, the team manager there, sort of very heavily influenced how I've done things here. That was an incredible start to being part of the World Cup circuit.

The thing that strikes me most about you is how prepared you are. We're sat in front of your big console, you obviously have your own business as well. All these junior bikes are running data acquisition. How important do you think that is?

I argue that for juniors it's really, really important because usually they've had very little experience providing feedback on their bike. Like I'm asking them questions that they probably haven't been asked before in terms of what the bike's doing and what they want the bike to do. I always say that the data is 50% of the picture, and then the riders' feedback and what the rider wants is the other 50%. And then when you combine the two, you can get the bike going in a direction that works best, but also does what they need it to do.

With juniors and their sort of lack of experience, especially at this level, I think it's super valuable for them to have access to this information, this level of feedback and sort of understanding of how that bike's working. It also goes a long way to sort of verifying what their perception of the bike, what their perception is of what's happening. And the data can either back that up or it can help them to say, okay, actually what you think is happening is actually this and this is what the data says is happening, does that make more sense in your head?

Then you're sort of educating them, they're not just smashing out laps, they're thinking about things. My favorite question is, which end of the bike do you feel is working better? And then that helps me decide, well, actually, we need to make an adjustment to the fork or a shock. That's not a question any of them have ever been asked before. Then when they do that run, they're thinking about actually, yeah I like the way the back's tracking the ground or the front feels like it's got more grip.

These systems don't have braking data yet. We're waiting on the sensors for that. But when we can start delving into how they're braking, like how they put the brakes on, how long they're on the brakes for, the brake balance, that sort of thing, that's a really valuable tool for them. Most of these settings here, we make a mechanical adjustment and that change happens straight away. When it involves rider feedback on what their inputs are, that almost involves some practice and repetition, and unlearning muscle memory and things like that. So that gets super interesting.

Do you feel like the data helps them shorten their learning curve, it used to take years for riders to understand their bikes to the level that we can now see data on. Do you think it really helps, especially these younger riders, to be able to visualize what they're feeling?

Yeah, for sure. It probably does shorten the learning curve, but it also makes it less steep in a way as well. They're not having to figure this stuff out for themselves or they don't have to spend a day at a bike park putting their clickers all the way one way to see what that feels like, and then all the way the other way. We can give them that information and help them put it into words and verbalize it, and then also verify that with a graph that is relatively easy to read. I mean, if I can read it, then it can't be that complicated.

The other part I wanted to touch on with you is the community side of these pits. You're considered by almost all the British privateers and a few other people as the person to come and speak to about data acquisition. You freely share information. How important to you is that whole community set out here?

I feel like there's no point in me hoarding all the information, and I want to try and do what I can to help all these riders be quicker. Again, it's an education thing. The more these riders understand how bikes work and not just suspension, the geometry changes, cockpit changes or tire pressures for instance, how all these things work and they all interact with each other and just help them understand that the whole thing is a system. The bike and the rider is a system and about how all those things work together. It also helps that I get verbal diarrhea and can't stop talking about it.

But no, it makes a lot of sense. The bikes themselves, these Mondraker bikes, are pretty sorted. They're quite fortunate to have the setup. Do you think they all grasp that?

Oh for sure. Especially when we have the idler system and some other bits and pieces, the three riders we've had that have been on Mondraker for at least the last year have had production standard production bikes and even the Summum is a pretty impressive downhill bike. Now they've got these new e13 wheels, like I say, the idler system and some other bits from Mondraker, they're fully aware that these bikes are pretty suitable tools for the job. Once you get the suspension working properly and you've helped the rider with their tire pressures and stuff like that, then all of a sudden, they quickly realize that this is a bike that way exceeds what they had before, even though it's fundamentally the same.

Let's go on to goals for the year. I think you've probably smashed it already, haven't you? What are you going to do now?

Well, obviously with Heather, the goal, I guess, is to defend that number one plate and let's keep seeing what she can do. We didn't have the greatest weekend with the boys, but they're already fired up for Poland. I think seeing Heather do what she did today has definitely given them some inspiration, a bit of motivation.

At the minute, it's a case of taking it round by round. I don't really have any goals for the entire season. It's just a case of helping them grow as riders as well. If I sort of had a goal for the season, I could possibly be limiting what we do with them. It's just basically I want to see them progress, not just on the bike, but also with how they interact with the mechanics and how they provide feedback and just develop them as riders.

Because the point of this team is to to develop future champions and really professional young riders. That's the drum I bang quite a lot, especially when it comes to being able to provide feedback, and what a useful tool that is to a factory team or a manufacturer. If you're very good at understanding what's going on with a bike and you can articulate that, then that alone makes you a pretty valuable asset.

You definitely churn out a professional rider out the other end. It's almost like an apprenticeship in here, right?

Yeah, I guess so, that's a good way of calling it.

I guess personally for yourself, I mean, you've moved from being a mechanic to a team manager. Is it a position you feel comfortable in? Do you miss turning the Allen keys?

Well, I mean, I still do it for Heather. I've been working on her bike all weekend. I do miss it when I'm not doing it. But then also, I quite like the idea of being a manager and just being able to focus on the data side of things. Yeah, I want to make it a long term thing. I definitely feel out of my comfort zone. I definitely got imposter syndrome, but I feel I've been out of my comfort zone a long time, and I quite enjoy that now. So I just keep saying yes to things and just seeing how it works out.

Did you ever kind of see yourself in this position and even working at the World Cup, what made you make that kind of crazy leap?

Well, I've always wanted to be involved in World Cup racing. I wasn't quite sure where I fitted in. I never liked the idea of being a mechanic because I felt like although I can turn an Allen key, I saw myself as just an average mechanic at best. So I'm quite glad I managed to sort of bluff my way through that. I do like the management side of things. In terms of preparation, all I've had was my experience in my previous job. I did 15 years at a paper mill and I worked my way up to a shift manager role there, but it's a very different ball game, really. There's a lot of structure in place there and a lot of procedures and SOPs and then here you're managing four teenagers.

Budding mechanics and people who want to be on this side of the fence. What would your advice to them be?

Budding mechanics, I would say make sure you've got the fundamentals right first. If the goal is to get to World Cups, you've got to be able to do all the little boring jobs, and you've got to be able to be very, very competent at them because they're the things that happen every day. There's the exceptional things like a frame breaking or a wheel breaking, but being able to build wheels and stuff is something that's a crucial skill, but more important is just basic maintenance.

Even being able to clean a bike properly is super important. It's taken me a little while to understand that. I'm very particular about my own bike and getting it clean, but doing it here with time pressure, so I've got 40 minutes to turn it around before Heather has to be up for her finals run, it's being able to clean a bike properly and do it pretty quickly, and then also go through all the bolt checks, pressure checks, spoke tension, all those sort of things. So being able to do the basics to a high level is a pretty crucial skill, I'd say.


Follow Nick on Instagram @nicklesterrides