After a very encouraging 2016, when Maverick Vinales won the Silverstone GP ahead of Cal Crutchlow, Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez, the 2017 season was like a cold shower for the men of Hamamatsu with 0 podiums, and just barely Andrea Iannone fourth in Motegi ahead of her teammate Alex Rins.
Faced with the extent of the disillusionment, it was then much more urgent to seek rediscovered competitiveness, than to place second-hand GSX-RRs with Aspar or Avintia.
« The 2017 season showed that we lacked a satellite team » admitted the team manager Davide Brivio. “If we had had two other drivers on track, we could have obtained a lot more information which probably would have been useful for development. »
“We would like another team to help us, support us, and this is a discussion that is happening inside the factory, I hope we can do it, but it is still too early to say . »
“For Suzuki it is difficult, because we have never had the opportunity to supply motorcycles to other teams, but we hope to be able to do so one day. »
Providing a satellite team involves answering a first question: providing motorcycles of the year identical to those of the official riders (like Honda for Cal Crutchlow at LCR, or Ducati for Danilo Petrucci at Pramac), or sell off the stock from the previous year, like Yamaha until this year at Tech 3?
Then it takes an entire organization to provide equipment for an entire season to a satellite team, on the technical, logistical and financial levels, and to have adequate personnel. For team manager Davide Brivio, Suzuki would be ready to take the plunge for 2019 and try to find a partnership agreement with Ángel Nieto Team, Avintia or Marc VDS.
« Our goal is to collaborate with a satellite team in 2019. The project depends on getting resources into our structure, but we don't have much time for that. We need to make this decision quickly » explained Brivio to Motorsport-Total.com.
“I am much more optimistic than last year, stressed the team manager. The satellite structure could help us a lot in the development of the motorcycle. »
“We need to know exactly what this means for us in terms of structure: spare parts, engineers and others. We should collaborate with a partner team because our structure is currently designed only for the official team. »
Photos © Suzuki
Source: Motorsport-Total.com
