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Winning is not enough: Suzuki to pull out of MotoGP

May 03, 2022

Winning races doesn't necessarily mean that racing is a winning proposition.

That was proven again as Suzuki informed the members of Team Suzuki ECSTAR yesterday that it would leave the MotoGP series at the end of this season, according to reports by multiple media outlets with reporters in the MotoGP paddock. Suzuki is leaving despite signing a five-year commitment to the series and recently hiring experienced Team Manager Livio Suppo to run the program.

Suzuki isn't leaving due to lack of success. The Japanese brand returned to MotoGP in 2011 and won both the rider's championship and the team championship in 2020 with Joan Mir. Recently, the company celebrated its 500th grand prix podium finish, thanks to Álex Rins, who currently sits third in the MotoGP championship.

But as many race teams have learned before, winning races doesn't guarantee paying the bills.

The decision appears to be part of a general retrenchment at Suzuki. The company's footprint has been shrinking in many arenas, not just racing. There is no Suzuki presence in the Superbike World Championship and Suzuki very nearly disappeared from MotoAmerica Superbike, despite the company's long history of winning championships in its former partnership with Yoshimura Racing. John Ulrich, founder of Team Hammer, which now runs the Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki team in the MotoAmerica Medallia Superbike class, said that Suzuki executives told him they were going to withdraw from the U.S. national series if Team Hammer didn't take over the program from Yoshimura.

Beyond racing, the company's retrenchment can be seen in the few new models that have been introduced in recent years. Where once Suzuki was part of "the big four" Japanese motorcycle manufacturers in the United States, Suzuki has now fallen behind some European companies that used to be much smaller.

Suzuki stopped selling cars in the United States a decade ago.

Back in MotoGP, the news suddenly makes Rins and Mir valuable free agents that other teams were already considering but thought might not be available. It also would leave Yamaha as the last factory building a MotoGP race bike with an inline-four engine and it would open up two spots on the grid for another team. This morning, MotoGP organizer Dorna Sports issued a statement saying it "has officially contacted the factory in order to remind them that the conditions of their contract to race in MotoGP do not allow for them to take this decision unilaterally." The statement added that other teams have already expressed interest in those spots.

The show will go on. But without Suzuki, it seems.