A couple of news bits concerning Suzuki and their technical as well as professional future.
There will be one day of testing immediately after the Czech Grand Prix at Brno this weekend and Suzuki has brought quite a few new parts in order to improve their obvious current disadvantages on track. In fact, they have so much stuff to test that team boss Paul Denning already fears that the track time won’t be enough for them to get all the work done in only one day.
“We will bring so many new parts to Brno that we would really need more than one day. I assume the track time will be from 9 in the morning to 6 PM and during that time we won’t leave a minute unused, hoping that we can get through our whole task list. We definitely need to take a step forward. For my taste the Brno circuit is the wrong place to test at, because the flowing line is comparable to the Catalunya circuit. However, our bike shouldn’t go too bad there. And normally the temperatures are pretty high at this time of year as well.” Concerning the new parts that are up for testing, Denning explained: “We have important changes to test for the aerodynamics package. Those affect not only the speed, but also the handling when entering the curves. Additionally we have tests planned for the chassis, the swingarm and the ECU where we want to sort out the best parts.”
Looking further into the future, Denning revealed during the Suzuki anniversary celebration at Brands Hatch last weekend that Suzuki’s participation in the MotoGP championship for 2011 is definitely secured. Alvaro will be starting his second year with the team and Rizla seems almost certain to be the title sponsor again. With the possibility of Toni Elias joining the team in the coming season [see various Silly Season reports on that, we recommend the excellent summary on MotoMatters] it would also be desirable for Suzuki to get a big Spanish sponsor on board as well, supporting the potential All-Spanish lineup and giving them a few more opportunities than with only the reportedly meager funding coming from Rizla.
However, it is still not clear whether we will still see Suzuki in the championship in 2012 when the new rules come into effect. The reports are a bit contradicting on that matter. On the one hand the development department at Suzuki is apparently already working on the prototype for 2012, on the other hand the team itself didn’t get any official confirmation yet about the continued participation in the championship beyond 2011.
Source: Motorsport Aktuell
