Australia’s Bryan Staring continued his transition into MotoGP last weekend at Mugello, finding his feet at the top levels of the sport.

Yet to finish in the points, it’s been a challenging season for the Team GO&FUN Honda Gresini rider, developing the FTR chassis while adapting to the spec Bridgestone tyres.

CycleOnline.com.au spoke to Staring this week about his progress so far.

Australia’s Bryan Staring has been making progress in his rookie MotoGP season.

You’re arriving at a great many of these circuits sight unseen, and are only going on what you’ve seen on paper or from previous races. Does this make your job more difficult on the Friday, given that you’re still finding your feet on the bike and having to learn a track at the same time?

Yes, that’s really difficult. It’s really hard on the Friday, especially the last few events. Friday morning has pretty much been a write-off with dodgy weather. I’ve actually been lucky it’s just been Friday morning. For me, I guess if you look at the graphs of where everyone starts and finishes, my graph starts at the very, very bottom and has to have a pretty rapid sort of acceleration.

It’s difficult but everyone in all of grand prix racing understands, and every rider has to go through it at some stage or another. I guess the majority of the riders probably went through it 10 or 12 years ago on 125s. But certainly I’m not the only rider having to learn the majority of the circuits for the first time this year.

Tell us about your start to the weekend at Mugello which is your team’s home race. You had to battle some average conditions early on – did this disrupt your progress at all?

There was a massive amount of importance put on this event because all of the team’s personnel, sponsors, extra staff and pretty much extra everything involved in a home race. As far as the practices actually went, it was a disaster really. Friday was wet, Saturday afternoon was not bad but getting to a different circuit I didn’t really get to put it all together on Saturday morning.

Had a dodgy little crash because I didn’t get the tyre temperature up properly on the out lap and that was really the biggest problem for the weekend – I absolutely completely destroyed the motorbike in what was just a stupid little crash. That was a real bummer. For the MotoGP and CRT bikes, the weekend was a complete disaster.

Is there a particular emphasis placed on qualifying well against your CRT opponents? The bikes seem very even – how much effort is put into finding those few extra tenths to climb a grid place or two higher?

Qualifying really is important, because often in the grands prix, once the race starts, it’s pretty common that everyone has the same pace, or a very similar pace. It’s hard to get away or do anything particularly different.

If you can start ahead of that pack you have a much better chance of finishing at the front of it rather than the back. The most important thing is you’ve got good race pace, but if you haven’t qualified well then you can’t use it. Each session and stage is equally important. It’s tough because for me I’m trying to work on everything at once.

Have you changed up the way you approach the races as your experience grows or do you go in with a similar strategy? If so, what is the basis of this?

I approach each race all the same. I definitely struggled more at Mugello with my riding style, it was a much more difficult circuit. In France if we had a dry race I probable would have been quite strong. But that’s not even relevant because it was wet. But in Mugello that wasn’t the case. Actually, Mugello was a really disappointing race for me. I missed by target lap times by half a second a lap.

It’s really the first time this year that I’ve sort of missed the target like that. It was just a bad weekend, everyone has them from time to time, I hope that was a one off and we can go to Catalunya next weekend and be strong and keep improving.

Staring has a close relationship with team owner Fausto Gresini and his team.

The team has the two bikes in MotoGP but you’re the sole CRT class runner. Do you feel it would be better to have that extra bike to build upon data and share the development load or is it more beneficial to be the sole focus of the staff assigned to the CRT project?

As far as development goes it would definitely be better if we had a second CRT bike but that’s certainly not the priority of the team. The team fields bikes in every category in MotoGP. As far as development goes there are other FTR chassis’ in the field but they’re with Kawasaki engines. The difference is only slight but in grand prix racing one millimetre is a big difference.

If ever we have something new to try I guess that’s where things are slowed down as it’s only me doing the laps and I can only do so many laps in a 45-minute session to learn not only the best outcome in terms of that new part while all the time still trying to learn the circuit. It’s just an absolutely enormous amount of information to take in over the four sessions before you race. I’ve only got two arms and two legs!

Like you mentioned, there’s a massive amount of responsibility placed upon you. You’ve always seemed quite calm and focused in your approach to racing but has this step up forced you to refine that focus and really eliminate any kind of outside distraction in order to achieve the objectives?

It’s difficult but it’s something I’ve accepted. It’s something I knew I was taking on with this challenge. And not only that, it’s also made easier by the fact that my team approach it as absolute professionals. They know that on the Friday I’ve got so much information to take in, they know that I’ve got no other direct experience with this bike – every outcome it seems I’m lacking a little bit of experience in some area.

Really their concern is that I learn from the experience and continue to improve, and other than Mugello, we’ve pretty much done that. All those things are made easy by the fact that the team understands. They don’t make my job any harder than it has to be.

What is it like working with Gresini Racing and having Fausto Gresini as a boss? What level of involvement does he have on a race day?

I certainly work closest with my guys, my crew chief, Diego, and the rest of my mechanics. But certainly Fausto is there from Thursday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, he has his eye on everything. Not just the motorcycling stuff but the team as a whole, and there’s people that oversee all sectors of the program.

It’s a pretty big operation, everyone there has someone to answer to and everyone has got to do their job the best they can, which is a given. It’s a big business, but importantly it’s a big family, and they do a fantastic job of it.

Staring in the CRT mix on the lone Gresini Honda FTR entry.

How important do you feel your formative years back in Australia were in preparing you for such a challenge? Often the preference is to try to get to Europe in a riders’ mid-teens, but your path was different. Do you feel this extra maturity you now have from racing and winning in Australia, and being successful in World Superstock, is an asset?

Absolutely. If I didn’t have one of those years of experience that I gained coming through it would make life so much more difficult. I wouldn’t be in this position. The reality is that I’m here because I had two good years in 2009 and 2010, but I would have never put those two years together like that if I didn’t have the five or six years prior, the ups and downs.

Even following that it was my decision to come to Europe to chase something, and to compete in Superstock, and choose the bike that I did and the team I did. In comparison to the way that some riders do it – the Aussie riders are coming to Europe so young – well not everyone’s got the opportunity to do that, that’s certainly the most expensive way to do it though definitely the best way to gain that grand prix experience.

Maybe my path is a bit of a testament to racing in Australia, and how important it is to develop a level of racing at home as high as it can be. That way the only thing left to learn when you get to Europe is the circuits themselves. Your racecraft actually should be at a high level from such a high standard of racing in Australia. That should be the goal in my opinion. Everyone has different ideas, and the amount of success that Casey’s [Stoner] had obviously changes that a lot.

Do you keep an eye on the progress of the Australian Superbike Championship and the other Aussies racing internationally? Is it good to see so many of these guys achieving at a high level?

Of course. Many of my good friends are racing in Australia, I’m always keeping an eye on that as I am on the guys here in Moto3. And the same goes for everyone. Josh Waters in the BSB, and Josh Brookes. Gareth Jones in IDM. All the rest of the guys all across the world. It’s a sport I love and these are people I know well, I really like to see them achieving what they are.