That's what they're saying a world wide recession is coming, part supply,gas prices, lingering covid and a stupid war.
Just got home from practice and I’m just catching up so I’m just seeing the results so it’s still funny to me.
So, I think the speculated reasoning for leaving doesn't hold water. Aren't the other manufacturers going to face the same challenges? I don't know what cooperation can withstand but I do know they have lost ALL and ANY credibility. If they try to come back to MotoGP how could they be taken seriously? Piss on me once you know....
All the other manufacturers have a wildly diverse source of income, are owned by a huge automotive conglomerate, have a big pocket series of sponsors, a combination of these or are stupid like aprilia. Suzuki has Indian car sales and hayabusa sales. squandering $10kk to $20kk a year when shit is going south does not keep you in business long.
Yeah but they aren’t one of the blue bloods of 500gp/motoGP to begin with. Kawasaki has an even more checkered history of being in then out then back in then back out, when compared with Suzuki and I don’t think anyone directly holds that against them. I don’t think this hurts Suzuki in this regard. If it helps them keep the doors open during tough financial times then it’s a good decision for them. It just sucks they are not going to be gridding up.
I get they have to keep the doors open and they’re not as large or diverse as the others in GP. But if you’re that weak financially then choose another series and stick with it. If you can’t run with the big dogs go to a smaller series. Where I come from that is called flossin’…
Why not pull out entirely, keep running world endurance where you win, cut the hemorrhaging of cash that racing is, survive the coming storm and survive? If things look better in a few years, invest in racing that pays you back or better yet, use that cash for the next next next big thing? Electric side by sides or cooler, a hayabusa powered sxs?
One of my businesses is packaging. During the height of the pandemic, it was raining money. That's fine if you can manage the volume without burying yourself with massive capex costs, but many people did just that. Nobody asked the question whether these opportunities were situational, or good strong volume growth that could be counted on for years to come. I'm a bit of a pessimist, so while we weren't able to leverage every opportunity, we're not left holding the bag for loans we can't cover. So I've been in that industry for 35 years. I've seen enough economic downturns (and have the data for those time periods), and ALL of them have been preceded within 6 months by a drop in packaging orders. Things started looking really weird in early January. Like, none of the data correlates, until you look at 2008. Yep....looks awfully familiar. While the cause is different, the effect is the same. My machine shop business also saw huge gains in the past 2 years, and while it hasn't tracked like the packaging side, I'm now seeing the same thing you talk about with new projects being killed off. I have to believe that the people at Suzuki are smarter than me (though they did build the Madura), so I'm guessing they see the storm coming and are battening the hatches.
Now, what Suzuki could do is pull out of motogp, offer their bikes and grid spots to Dorna and a team like vds and let that team look for sponsorship cash and run it all. They started SRC a few years back, let them run a program. If no one bites, oh well, you tried keeping your bikes on the grid. if motogp is so important, why isn’t bmw there? They could race for less than they spent on tv commercials in Russia in 2020. Because no one cares!
Farewell sweet Suzuki, you came you saw, you conquered and then, you fucked off into the sunset leaving a trail of tears, gasps and mystery.
For sure this electric-fication craze will shake up the way auto companies do business. No more tooling up to make engine parts! Ugh!
Sooo are we going to see something like the Hayate Kawi with Melandri with zero development next year on 2022 Suzukis?
A lot of the fixtures we've been building the past few years have been for the electric cars. Lots of aluminum parts. different stuff for sure. It's weird seeing a part in cad and trying to guess where it goes based on body position without reading the part name/# etc. Some of these I have no clue. We just made one for an aluminum "engine" cradle. That won't hold an engine.
As an engineer in the electric vehicle segment, I have to add that there's just as many parts that are critical in an EV as in an ICE vehicle, if not more. 60-70 ECUs in each vehicle keep me busy. More software, less hardware, but just as much work, if not more.