Just read that Kawasaki is pulling out of Motogp, this follows news of Subura pulling out of WRC and Honda from F1. I guess the economic downturn has really started to impact other areas.
It’s not that bad… at least it wont’ be for MotoGP '09 at any rate… Jorge Martinez who runs the fairly successful Aspar teams in 125GP and 250GP is likely to take over at least one of the Kawasakis and hopefully two… There was a lot of talk about him fielding a third Kwak in a satellite capacity even before Kawasaki announced their withdrawal, but the factory insisted on Shinya Nakano being the rider and Martinez couldn’t sell a non Spanish rider to his sponsors so it fell through, but now things have really changed so who knows…
Kawasaki bowing out was strange news, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of team green just yet… For them to have pulled the plug the new for '09 bike must really have been a nail in early testing, but they raced all of '08 with an uncompetitive bike that made West and Hoppers look like a laughing stock, so there’s no reason they can’t field a new uncompetitive bike in '09 
… I guess the bosses in Japan must have balked at the idea of throwing even more money at the '09 season, but they’ve already spent almost US$10m on development and testing of the '09 bike, plus team and rider contracts and they’re also under contract with Dorna to race until 2011 so there will be penalties for that if they really pull out completely… Dorna’s also under contract to the FIM to provide 18 bikes in the premier class otherwise the FIM won’t sanction it as a World Championship meaning they’re under pressure to keep the grid full as well, so I think there’s a very strong motivation to pull a rabbit out of a hat somehow… Dorna’s boss Carmelo Ezpeleta and some FIM people are in Japan as we speak meeting with the Japanese manufacturers about how to keep MotoGP teams on board, so there should be more news later this week…
I really hope they work this out. It really wouldn’t be the same to not have all four Japanese big names in Motogp. On the flip side, Superbike is looking good this year, with the addition of Aprilia and BMW. It should be quite competitive since a lot of the riders have come down from Motogp.