During a press conference held in English at his hospitality venue, Hervé Poncharal shared his concern about the side effects caused by the proliferation of factory teams.
We offer you here a translation of the central part of his remarks.
Hervé Poncharal: “Right now, I'm not a very happy man, not a very happy team leader. We lost Bradley early in the season, now Pol has made his decision to leave us.
Why, am I a little worried right now? I feel that for the championship, Dorna, the FIM and the IRTA have done a great job, everything is going in the right direction, working and pushing to have a single ECU.
For years, we have clearly never had bikes so close to the factory teams, whether Tech3 compared to Yamaha or independent teams compared to Honda and Ducati.
We also pushed for more factories and it worked because there are now four brands that are clearly ahead of us, plus two others that are working hard and I'm sure they will be competitive very soon.
But whatever the reasons, and although we have a machine very close to the factory one, I don't know if it's a trend or a fad but if you are a fast young rider, there is no has nothing except a factory handlebar.
I think it's quite difficult for us to digest and understand it because we were still the B team a few years ago, but I think we are now a C team.
I always thought we were the Junior Team within the Yamaha organization, but are we the Junior Team for Yamaha now?
I think the answer is really “no”, because when was the last time a Tech3 rider joined the factory team? I think it's 2010 with Ben Spies, but he wasn't actually a Tech3 driver; he was a factory rider who had already won the Superbike World Championship who should have joined the Factory team earlier but there was no place then.
And I now really think that the B Teams are the new factories, like Suzuki and I don't know if Ducati is B+ or A-, something like that and, in our sport, I believe more and more that we see that this are the drivers who make the difference. And clearly you have 5, 6 or 7 drivers, in fact almost all the drivers who can fight for victory or for the podium, and all these guys are only interested in a factory team.
It's a bad thing, because I remember a few years ago, in 2012, we made 8 podiums. This has changed a lot and the last time a satellite team won was in 2006 with Toni Elias, in Portugal I believe.
It's a difficult situation because if you don't have the right driver, you don't have the right team that attracts sponsors, and if you don't have sponsors, you have even less chance of attracting a promising pilot, and you fall into a vicious cycle.
So yes, I'm a little worried about the future of independent teams.
This is a fact that I share with you; everyone did a good job, we all worked towards this for the championship. In our case, Yamaha played the game and our bike is really very competitive, but whatever the reason, no one wants it! “
