Even most of the Japanese brands don't see value in racing in the States and they sell way more product in the US then Ducati.
From my understanding they still want a similar setup like pegram/Austin/whoever with an established team and budget for them to support. I don’t see them ever having an official team like yamaha but I would be damn near certain that if an established team shoes interest with a valid competitive rider they would support. Just my personal feeling from talks.
Many of the BSB and TT/Roads teams are dealer efforts. So, if sales are good in the USA maybe some of these dealers need to step up here? Or are sales not good here? I have no clue.
One dealer could literally almost cover the entire UK. What's a dealer in California (which is longer than the UK to begin with) going to do outside the two races there? How about this for size?
Taylor Knapp has gone pretty damn fast on our Panigale R at Barber. Best Q time of 25.9 and most race laps in the high 26's, low 27's on a bike that was lower spec than the MA Superstock bikes from '15-17. We almost ran a team in MA SBK in 2017 on Corse bikes with full technical support from Corse. With who I had in place, I think we would've fought for race wins. The main sponsor bailed in the final hour and that was that. Heartbreaking to say the least. I've had a lot of interaction with DNA and Corse and can tell you that DNA does not have the budget to go racing. It's not going to happen. It's not that they don't want to, believe me, the budget just isn't there. The CEO of DNA is very passionate about racing. If there is a team capable of winning races who sees value in partnering with Corse, the bikes and the support is available. It just comes at a certain cost that is out of reach for most teams without a big title sponsor. When people say "Factory Supported" with Ducati, that means you are paying for support. They are not sponsoring you.
didn’t we have this conversation regarding The Ben a couple of years back making a comeback with ducati? if that’s not a serious rider, i don’t know who is
Ben saying he will ride is andnis interested is different than a program showing up and wanting to use Ducati product. Like if Attack decided they wanted (would be willing) to use Ducati, then it would happen. This doesn’t mean Ben couldn’t put a program together, just the way I read Robs post and the same thing my limited understanding is of their want to go racing.
Re Ducati, when inquiring about SBs, we were told regardless of rider, their sponsorship was allowing access to the bikes and equipment. (As was from 2 other manufactures) The V4 is extremely good, super impressed with the ones I have ridden. Ken
fair.. i mean, you have to have a team behind a rider and i knew a big part of it was funding, i’m just saying if THAT rider can’t make it happen with Ducati, then it doesn’t bode well for others.
In 2017 about 469 thousand new motorcycles were sold in the US, of which Ducati sold about 8,900 units. For a good comparison Harley sold about 147 thousand bikes and are the market share leader. Worldwide Ducati did have a slight increase in sales in 2017 for a total of about 55K bikes. So I think Ducati feels that winning MotoGP races gets them a ton of press and that's more important in a shrinking global market than investing in the local markets?
http://www.americanmotorcyclist.com...d=3&moduleid=3004&articleid=11&documentid=498 2019 rules released
Well small potatoes here, but looks like a bit of Kawi support in the Canadian series. http://canadamotoguide.com/2018/12/13/jordan-szoke-switches-to-kawasaki-for-2019/
Icon. Honestly I can't believe they haven't gone up in value. I'd think it's a solid investment at this point.
Speaking of dealer backed efforts. Meanwhile, in Canada, Szoke signed a two year deal with Canadian Kawasaki and dealer Blackfoot Motors.