Not so long ago, most engineers in the MotoGP paddock were self-taught former racers who had switched from making motorcycles go fast by riding them to making them winners through design and set-up. Those days are disappearing. Most new MotoGP engineers arrive in the paddock via university, after achieving degrees in mechanical, electronic or aeronautical engineering.
However, the MotoGP paddock’s most successful engineer didn’t arrive via either of those routes. Alex Baumgärtel is one half of Kalex, Moto2’s most renowned chassis constructor. The other half is Klaus Hirsekorn. Hence Kalex: K for Klaus, Alex for Alex.
“I started aged 10, working in my dad’s machining company, destroying parts and crashing an old Zundapp 50cc in a sandpit near our house,” grins Baumgärtel, who is friendlier and more open than most engineers in the MotoGP paddock. “By 12 years old I was welding and working a lathe.”
Baumgärtel’s university thesis in the 1990s was designing and building a single-cylinder engine with carbon piston and ceramic crankshaft, conrods and valves. And yet chassis design interested him more.
“Handling the power of an engine became my focus,” he said.
Since 2011 Kalex has won more than 170 grands prix and 23 riders’ and constructors’ world championships in the Moto2 class – an astonishing achievement by a
