Honda Still In A Panic Over Money

Of all the factories in motorcycle racing, the one you would least expect to start floundering around in a panic is Honda. It's a huge company with a solid history on the road and the track. You could say they're the 800lb gorilla of bike racing. However, the credit crunch has convincingly kicked the crotch of the collossal company, and their panicky cost-cutting continues.

It was surprising enough when the factory Honda squad was yanked from the Yanks' AMA championship. The new bombshell is that no factory Honda team will race in the Suzuka 8 hour race. To skive off the most prestigious race in Japan is an incredible thing to do. I can only assume that it's a publicity stunt to show the Japanese people how serious they are about saving money. The actual financial saving will be fairly minimal. Suzuka 8 hour bikes are road-derived Superbikes in a relatively low state of tune, and although it's a very long race that requires proper testing and development, it's still just one race. What's a few million dollars when your company is hundreds of millions in the hole? In an honour-based culture like that of Japan, it wouldn't be the done thing to show up at a big race splashing the cash around on a track that the company owns. Not when that company is in the midst of a major financial crisis. That few million dollars will seem like a lot to the watching Honda employees, who don't know if they'll be made redundant by the end of the year.

The other surprising act of penny pinching is in the British Superbike championship. Incredibly, the semi-factory HM Plant Honda team have announced that they will run without spare bikes this year. This is almost certainly down to Honda reducing their level of support, and HM Plant simply not having the cash to buy another pair of full-on Superbikes (BSB will essentially run to WSBK rules in 2009). Now, neither of the team's duo of Aussie riders is known as a crasher, in fact Glen Richards is a sort of anti-Xaus in that respect. But still, it beggars belief that these guys could, through no fault of their own, get knocked off their bikes in a first corner melee, and if the race is red-flagged they would have nothing but paddock scooters to ride in the restarted race. Richards is one of the big title favourites in this season's BSB, but a severely trashed bike in the first race of the day could see him unable to start race 2 as well, losing a possible 50 points.

The bike racing division of Honda has been shaken down for its lunch money by the board of directors, who are still having crushing chest pain thanks to the catastrophic performance of the car division. It remains to be seen how Honda will perform on the track with their new financial constraints.

MotoGP Slinks Off To Silverstone In 2010

As if MotoGP couldn't suck any harder, it has been announced that the series will dump Donington for 2010 and replace it with Silverstone. (Incidentally, that's not the first time the words Donington and dump have appeared in the same sentence).

Silverstone is a god-awful racetrack. Wide, flat, and featureless, it's generally hated by fans and photographers who would rather see something more dramatic. The last time the British Superbikes visited the F1-losing track, most of the excitement was generated by crashes at the moronically slow final chicane. Last time the World Supers were there, the excitement came from.... Uh.... Well, to be honest I can't even remember. Silverstone sucks that much. Luckily, both BSB and WSBK still go to the excellent Donington track. (I nearly said excellent Donington facility, but nobody has ever used those words in the same sentence so I'd better not.)

It's a major coup for Silverstone, whose blazer-clad board of directors have been sitting in their brand new trackside building, sipping G&T and quietly fuming about the loss of Boremula One. They allegedly lost F1 because the place was a tip but really because they couldn't pony up as much cash as the evil regimes of the Middle and Far East (OK, Singapore isn't evil, but it is pretty rich.)

Now, who is currently head honcho of the British Racing Drivers Club (BRDC) which runs Silverstone? None other than ex-F1 champ Damon Hill, a bike racer who switched to cars but still adores 2-wheeled machinery. He will have been fighting hard to steal MotoGP from Donny, pointing out to Dorna that they'll receive 5-star treatment and won't play second fiddle to the wonderful Max Mosely and the little one, whassisname. As a genuine bike enthusiast, Damon scores a lot of points over most circuit owners. He also merits respect for the way that he is far less of a tit than the average F1 champion.

Silverstone held the British 500cc motorcycle Grand Prix a fair few times in the past, including the legendary battle between Barry Sheene and Kenny Roberts. (I think Valentino Rossi's old boy Graziano was in that race, but I can't be bothered looking it up.) So there is plenty of bike racing history at Silverstone. Hopefully Damon can slap the circuit designers round for a while until they come up with a better final chicane. God knows how high Jorge Lorenzo would highside out of the current 5mph one!

Kawasaki Hokey Cokey

Kawasaki have finally pulled their Green Team out. Of MotoGP, that is.

Thanks to their riders John Hopkins and Ant West, last year Kawasaki's MotoGP team were known as "Team Dude". Considering their results, they should've been known as "Team Dude, We Suck!" Faced with a credit crunch, the Kawasaki hierarchy drank a wee Sake and decided with heavy hearts that Kawasaki Heavy Industries couldn't keep up such a heavy investment in MotoGP.

This reads a lot like Honda's pullout from Boremula One. A large company, participating in a sport they don't really care about, spending lots of money for no return, with slow machinery piloted by a has-been and a never-quite-was. When the board of directors are looking for a large waste of money that can be canned without anyone really giving a monkey's, the race team are at the top of the list.

Do the non Kawasaki riding fans of MotoGP care? Only if they're Hopper or Melandri fans. People will support struggling teams if they're battling the odds, like Team KR did. When it's a massive Japanese company getting terrible results there's no excuse. Kawasaki's MotoGP team never really impressed anyone, and with a full factory squad simply making up the numbers, they were losing a lot of face. The only option left is to ritually disembowel the team.

So, will Aspar be running the awful green bikes next year? Frankly, who cares? There will be no money for proper development, so the bikes won't get any faster. The Honda satellite teams will be running bikes the same spec as Pedrosa had late-ish last year. In other words, much better than the Kwaks. Aspar wants his foot in the door of MotoGP, and is prepared to run terrible bikes to make up the numbers for a season or two if need be (he has top-spec machinery in the junior classes to keep his pecker up.)

It's hard to shed any tears for Kawasaki. Their MotoGP project was always half-baked, showing a flash of brilliance in 2007 then blowing it. If King Kenny Roberts can be unceremoniously booted out of the sport, largely thanks to idiotic rule changes pricing them out of the market, then who the hell are Team Green in comparison?

MotoGP Enters The Twilight Zone

Silly season started sooner than expected in 2008, and seemed to be over. Incredibly, it has found a new lease of life. Rumours ranging all the way from daft to idiotic have been flooding the internet, largely thanks to the Guys in Green.

It looks like Kawasaki will either be pulling out of MotoGP, or not pulling out of MotoGP. Maybe leaving their dog-slow bikes in the charge of pint-sized small-capacity Spanish legend Aspar. Or not. Maybe keeping Hopper but not Melandri, or the other way round. Or both. Or neither.

These options lead to various permutations, whereby Hopkins and Melandri would go to different teams, bringing sponsorship (Hopper) or fading reputation (Melandri) to displace younger riders. Or displace older riders, with one of the more ludicrous rumours being that Colin Edwards would get punted from Tech 3 in favour of Hopper. (Yeah, because Herve would rather have sponsorship than close links to Yamaha. Sure.) At this time, everybody is denying everything.

Added to this is the fact that Pramac Ducati have lost their sponsorship from Alice. (Alice? Who the f...) So maybe Pramac will be down to 1 bike, and Onde 2000's dodgy building and evil dictating backers will increase their investment to 2 bikes. And that would mean riders moving to different teams. Of course, everyone is denying everything about everything.

This is Silly Season at its silliest. No more than 1 in 10 of the rumours flying around is at all convincing. Most of them come from the Spanish press, whose incredible ability to uncover major scoops is rivalled only by their incredible ability to make them up. My plan is to sit back in a bemused fashion and watch it all unfold.