The collateral damage of Suzuki’s escape

The MotoGP World Championship remains shocked by the irrevocable decision of the Suzuki Motor Corporation Board of Directors, which has not yet been officially notified from Hamamatsu, to abandon MotoGP competition at the end of this campaign. This is not the first time they have used this caliber and unilaterally, but this time it was quite unexpected not only for their employees but also for the championship rectors. Suzuki Ecstar leads the team classification with 16 points against Aprilia Racing and until then Jerez Alex Rins was the co-leader of the riders classification.

Prior to the official statement, Dorna arrived reminding Suzuki “that the terms of his MotoGP racing contract do not allow him to make this decision unilaterally”, where they will need to reach a friendly agreement in the economy to break the contract and so far no legal measures have been considered.

Carmelo Ezpeleta has always defended that the ideal grid should be 12 teams and 24 motorcycles, which is what they achieved for the start of the 2022-26 season, even given the impossibility of Suzuki and Aprilia to have a team Factory and a private team they have the perfect Ducati rescued four teams and eight bikes on the grid, which is also not the most perfect, but so far the small Italian factory in Borgo Panigale can afford it.

A new Hayate team along with Kawasaki or Aprilia puts in two more

Now with Suzuki’s escape, it will be necessary to see which factory manages to put the two missing bikes on the track – “Dorna continues to receive high levels of interest from several official factories and independent teams looking to join MotoGP grid “directed the-.

The most plausible thing is that it is Aprilia who in charge of put those two extra bikes, they also interested in continue to grow technically, but behind it there is another extra movement since WithU RNF, now a Yamaha customer and with only a contract for in 2022, wants to spend on Aprilia-also more affordable because its main sponsor is Italian-.

But in any case some new independent team is needed, either take those two satellite bikes from Yamaha or, in case Noale can’t put two more bikes on the grid, try to fix like in 2009 it happened when Kawasaki left the World Cup and the material were kept by the private Hayate team made up of former members of the green team led by coach Andrea Dosoli. In fact, in 2011 former Suzuki, his then team manager Paul Denning and project leader Shinichi Sahara tried it, but it couldn’t. In any case, the blow was hard because two champion factory bikes left two years ago.

The ‘mercato’ 2022 has exploded

Another collateral injury for the championship has to do with the ‘market’ of drivers since 2022 has been key for 90% of them whose contracts will expire, all of them except Marc Márquez, Brad Binder, Franco Morbidelli and Pecco Bagnaia, the only ones to have signed this 2022 contract, the rest tied them up early.

Now with two less competitive bikes, everything has exploded and many veteran riders can now find themselves in serious engagement. From the very beginning, Fabio Quartararo could no longer continue to play cat and rat at Yamaha – an announcement for Le Mans, his home GP, was not excluded – and a champion like Joan Mir shouldn’t have the problem with putting on a competitive motorcycle -there was talk about the Repsol Honda at the expense of Pol Espargaró-, but his priority was renewal. And now Àlex Rins, a rider who came to Jerez as co-leader of the World Championship, is another free agent when he has been wearing Hamamatsu blue since 2017 and he already has everything outlined to move on.

But for those who pretend to start a rising contract by playing with other offers, their options are gone and others betting on the change of scenery can now be seen to be very cold outside. Even Ducati, which has always declared that it will not fish out, has rethought.

And then there are a hundred career Suzuki employees, technicians, mechanics, marketing and communications who will also lose their jobs, normally the contracts are annual, but in the case of team manager Livio Suppo, who joined the team last February, his multi-year contract. They can consider themselves ‘privileged’ by giving them space to maneuver. In 2011 Suzuki finished the team in November at the end of the campaign and left them lying.