MotoGP - Kevin Schwantz to run Suzuki team in 2010?
8-24-2009
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moto123.com
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The silly season has been on for a few months now, dominated by the monster rumour that 1993 World Champion Kevin Schwantz will take a leading role in running the Suzuki team in MotoGP starting with the 2010 season.
After retiring for GP500 in 1995, the Texan tried to launch a Stock Car racing career without proper backing, before becoming a world-wide ambassador for Suzuki. This job included riding schools and coaching promising young riders, and thus keeping Schwantz in touch with racing at the World and US levels.
Sources have said that Schwantz is in the interview process to acquire key personnel in preparation for a presumably larger effort from Suzuki in MotoGP for next season, after lean times since Kenny Roberts jr won the GP500 Championship on a Suzuki in 2000.
The renewed effort may mean a return to the team for John Hopkins, released last year by the then British team manager, and a rider with the potential to win races and a world championship with the right team. Anything would be better for Hopper than his present stint as a private rider in World Superbike.
No juicy rumours or facts have surfaced from Yoshimura Suzuki, the American powerhouse team, who is losing their on-track and development leader, Mat Mladin, after he clinched a seventh AMA Superbike title at the last round. Mladin has announced his retirement from motorcycle racing at the end of this season, and his return to his native Australia and his multiple businesses and pastimes (Mladin is an avid golfer), as well as his growing family.
This means that Suzuki have lost their key race development rider for the GSX-R1000, not good news as they are not doing well in World Superbike these days.
Another potential loss may be that of ace tuner Peter Doyle, a key member of the Yoshimura development team and leader of the small core of technicians who prepared Mladin’s wining bikes. Doyle could stay put at Yosh, call time on his career, or… be lured by Schwantz into the MotoGP effort. That would be a great bit of news for that team and a big loss for the Yosh team in the US.
Photo Credit : MotoGP
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