Moto GP / Trent Burton / 06 January 2009 / Leave a comment

The financial crisis is here and it's here for a while. Industries across the board have been tightening their belts, making cut-backs and closing up shop and in the past few months we've seen the motorsport world do the exact same, writes Trent Burton.

First Honda pulled the plug on its F1 operation and Subaru followed suit withdrawing from the World Rally Championship. Honda also pulled out of the American Superbike series and Suzuki has scaled back operations in the British Superbike Championship.

Yet, despite all of this, there always seemed to be the feeling that MotoGP would be safe and secure. Honda stated that its car and motorcycle division were separate and the F1 move wouldn't affect its MotoGP teams. A new Ducati team joined the fray at the end of 2008 boosting the premier class field to 19. Fiat re-signed a huge deal to remain the naming rights sponsor of the factory Yamaha team featuring Valentino Rossi. 2008 crowd figures were huge. Then, last week, the bubble burst.

Just after Christmas the word around MotoGP was that the factory Kawasaki team were withdrawing from the series with immediate effect. Team Green was off. A press release was expected yesterday confirming the decision but as yet the Japanese manufacturer has remained silent. As the rumour mill has gone into overdrive on the net, Kawasaki rider John Hopkins was even in the dark, posting on his blog: "As you all know, everything is up in the air and people want answers... There will be an official press release held very soon, where we can confirm or deny all rumors."

If true, which it almost certainly is, then this left the field at just 17. Then it seemed the satellite Pramac Ducati team had lost their sponsorship and thus couldn't afford to run two bikes as planned and were scaling back to just the one, for rookie Mika Kallio. Down to sixteen.

Thankfully, in stepped new Ducati team Onde 2000, who are supporting Sete Gibernau's return to racing with a one bike team. With their seemingly bottomless bag of cash they snapped up the spare bike, and spare rider fellow rookie Nicollo Canepa, and turned themselves into a two bike operation. The collective sighs of relief were heard across the paddock.

The problem is simple. Prototype motorcycle racing is expensive. A team's budget for the year, running two riders, is in the region of US $15 million. Consider that it's almost feasible, in the rival World Superbike championship that you could run an entire season with bike and rider on a top MotoGP rider's salary alone and we get a clearer picture of the issue at hand.

2009 sees two manufacturers, BMW and Aprilla, debut their new bikes in the WSBK, not MotoGP. This is obviously a sensible cost cutting decision but also a better demonstration of their new road going machines in a production based series than a prototype one. And that translates to sales. With car and motorcycle sales on the decline worldwide, selling product is of course the major aim. That old motorsport adage is true. Win on Sunday, sell on Monday. If Ducati stop being successful in racing, they are going to sell less road bikes. It's that simple. But winning races costs money. Lots of it.

So what are Kawasaki actually getting out of Moto GP? One feels that's why they are indeed, getting out of it.

Now we find rumours that Jorge Martinez and his Aspar team, who currently run in the lower classes (with Britain's Bradley Smith on board) might step in and revive their MotoGP aspirations picking up the two Kawasaki bikes. But this raises more questions. As before, will its Spanish sponsors demand a Spanish rider instead of the Italian and American contracted to Kawasaki currently? Will Kawasaki offer development on the bike throughout the year?

It's hard to imagine Martinez wanting to be stuck with two bikes that he can't develop throughout the season. If that was the case Rossi and Stoner might end up lapping them by half distance which is good for no-one. Again, no-one is confirming or denying anything right now.

But the big question is complicated and regards the long term stability of the sport. There has been discussions of capping rider salaries which won't work as long as footballers get paid more than a bloke hanging onto a bike at 200mph. They can restrict revs or limit engine development but this just gives the bigger teams even more advantage.

Personally, I think the answer is stability. Keep the rules fixed for a while. This in itself will slow the development down. And improve the racing. And keep costs down.

Stop fiddling with the rules and regulations Dorna. Please. Otherwise, sadly, the exact reason MotoGP is the premier class might be its own downfall. Expensive prototype bikes are exciting, but often irrelevant. Yes, some of the technology trickles down to the road bikes, but this can be tested in WSBK too. In essence, MotoGP is a show. But it's a damn good one. And one that needs to survive.