Suzuki therefore chose the youth hostel-style organization for its next two years. A high-risk bet and a strategy geared towards investment rather than a policy of purchasing on the market. An approach already known with Maverick Vinales and we saw the result: the trained champion left for the competition. But more is needed to discourage the boss on the ground Davide Brivio which, for 2019 and 2020, doubles the stake! Kidneys 22 years and Mir 20 years will be its spearhead. But age isn't everything. You also need a particular profile. And, on this point, Andrea Iannone had no chance…
At Suzuki, we defend our choices on drivers by arguing that we want to win with our own men, who are as much a part of the project as the machine. Davide Brivio explains with conviction: “ our message is that Suzuki wants to win with its riders. Of course it's a big challenge, but we want to win races, to one day win the championship with a Suzuki rider. This rather than with a driver that you would have purchased on the market. We do not want to acquire a driver who is supposed to make us win ».
He insists : " we have the courage to do that. I think that if we can keep Alex Rins and Joan Mir for a long time, we will have a very good team which will provide our two drivers with the means to regularly fight in the top 5 of the championship. This is our goal. We want to win of course, but we realize that winning is the result of a long process for a young team like ours. And we want to succeed according to our method, while respecting our values ».
On this topic, Davide Brivio describes a Joan mir in such a way that we quickly understand thatAndrea Iannone was not in the mold: ““ Joan Mir is only 20 years old and, yet, he has already been crowned World Champion by scoring no less than 10 victories last season. He has already shown some potential: he can be very fast, formidable, while being witty and kind... in short everything we look for in a pilot. By talking with him, I could see that his ideas were quite clear, that our project had appealed to him and that he wanted to join us ».
