Team Hammer replacing Yoshimura

Yoshimura has been a constant staple in American road racing paddock for @50 years. Don’t kid yourself, it’s a significant loss. It’s far from good news.

 

.....and not quite as long a history as Yoshimura Suzuki but Monster Energy Yamaha officially bowing out as well certainly didn't help. And its not like another NEW team stepped in to take their places. Their operations were absorbed by EXISTING teams more or less. In other words the paddock is still at a net loss overall.

Indeed, definitely not good news unless we're expecting to see a couple of new teams form before 2020 kicks off.

 

How can Suzuki not afford anything?

 

Pure Speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Yoshimura contract was coming out of Suzuki roadrace budget. If Suzuki street bikes aren't selling well it would be hard to afford Yosh. Perhaps JGR team can afford Yosh from the dirt side?

I don't know, as I stated pure speculation but it doesn't seem unrealistic that there are separate race budgets based on divisions. not just "powersports" but divisions within "powersports".

 

Management has to justify investment. Sportbike sales are horrible. Budget bikes aren’t going to have the margins to create the required profit or the connection to road racing. It’s really hard to spend “X” millions on a program, if there are no tangible gains.

 

Here's to all the folks involved in next years MA effort. It's building and I dig it. I don't give a shit about who does what, when, or where. As long as bikes are racing, I'll support it.

 

Exactly!
As long as there purpose built bikes racing on track... count me in as a paying spectator.

 

2021 motoamerica will be add on races at wera events

 

Significant loss for sure but... a wake up call that outfits like that need to change their cost model, same with Graves. Other teams around the world are successfully running support programs and their cost structure is a lot more streamlined. I think from a cost perspective this is great news from Suzuki and no it’s not because I am happy to see Yosh gone. You have many costs for a team, let’s just say logistics. You can haul all Hammers bikes in 1-2 semi’s vs yosh having all those costs for just 2 bikes. General overhead is spread out over more units on the track, so overhead allotted to each “bike” is less. Running costs are no change as far as hard parts but it’s just more efficient to spread things out over more units. It’s not a pure 1:1 relationship when adding a bike to a stable, plus add profit in there among other things and this is a much better solution than Suzuki just pulling the plug entirely. I hope hammer will pick up a few people from yosh but who knows. I am also confident they will have good bikes on the track.

 

+ 2

 

Exactly.

It's like people are waiting for this shit to die.

The good old days are gone, time to deal with it.

 

Can’t blame Suzuki for trying to reign in / reduce cost while also continuing to be involved with a good team. That part is beneficial for both parties, no doubt. To be honest, I’ve been surprised how steadfast Suzuki has remained at the level they have. For being the smallest of the big four, they’ve contributed quite a lot.

The sad thing is, I just don’t believe the manufactures receive back a lot of benefit thru racing. The days of race on Sunday, sell on Monday has been dead for awhile now. Sometimes it’s more of a challenge for companies to change their ways than to continue them. I think Honda saw the light several years ago, while both Kawi and Yami are sort of in between. If I were a motorcycle sports marketing manager I would be hard pressed to spend a large amount of my budget on road racing. I don’t think it’s worth the ROI.

 

Define support?

 

Talking about it on the Internet.

 

I hate to say it but you're right. The days of going racing for brand recognition are dead.

This isn't exclusive to MotoAmerica either.

 

By showing "solidarity"

 

Oh man. No mercy given.

 

I'm certain the Ulrichs' have the contract sewn up and understand the risk. Remember what manufacturer they ran in 2013 - 2014...? And who they came back to...

 

you're talking about ROI and Le Mans and F1 are laughing in your face. that doesn't mean the teams themselves are not net positive based on whatever arrangements that they have with sponsors and factories, but if you start talking sales volume/revenue generated by those efforts at the showroom level... you're then out of your mind. Lamborghini, Ferrari, Aston Martin, and McLaren could all just put rich meatheads on youtube blogs and sell as many cars based on a "lifestyle" as they do putting tens or hundreds of millions into racing programs each year. Chevy doesn't need Corvette Le Mans cars to sell a Corvette to some mid-life crisis dentist or midwest heehaw dude. i'd bet you'd be hard pressed to catch even 1 out of 50 Corvette owners that have even actually watched a single GT series race, or even has Bein Sports to do so on their cable package.

and then that also depends on your mission statement. do you go racing to sell bikes or do you sell bikes to go racing. if everyone on earth is just a unit pusher now, fair enough, and so be it... i'm sure somebody out there in an E-suite actually still WANTS to go racing though at more than one of these companies, and while nobody is ever in the business of losing money, maybe they don't six-sigma every single piece of their business until all you end up with is a Toyota Camry.

 

True. This is why there is both MOTO-GP and WSBK. What does MA offer any manufacturer outside of these.