In worrying news overnight, British Superbike rider, Stuart Easton was shockingly injured in a crash during practice for the North West 200 in Ireland. Easton and his team-mate had a collision which resulted in Easton being conveyed to hospital with a broken femur, pelvis, injuries to his hands and a probable ruptured bowel. Updates will be forthcoming, but it illustrates again how dangerous the Northern Ireland road courses are. Gary Mason, Easton’s team-mate, was uninjured in the accident. Let’s hope Stuart heals quickly.
Now, a question for you. How long have I been predicting that 2011 would be Suzuki’s last year in MotoGp? A long time, yeah? Well, it seems like I might have been right. With Yamaha expected to debut their 2012 prototype after the Italian GP, the only manufacturer not to have shown their 2012 bike is Suzuki. Further, there is no talk of when this will take place. While team boss, Paul Denning, is talking vapour ware about “positive discussions” and “every hope” and the usual media-speak, the signs are not good. Especially as Jeremy Burgess was recently quoted as saying, “It’s heavily rumored that Suzuki has not begun work on a liter MotoGP bike and will exit MotoGP as a factory team at the end of the 2011 season.”
If this IS so, and I predict that it is, then it will be a sad end to a racing lineage that goes back to the 1960’s and which saw championships in the premiership class to Barry Sheene (2), Franco Uncini, Marco Luchinelli and Kenny Roberts Jr. Unfortunately, in this decade, Suzuki’s effort has been half-hearted at best and dismal at worst. In fact, were it not for the Mladin/Spies domination of AMA superbike and Troy Corser’s lone WSBK title for the marque, you could almost have missed them altogether (oh, and Chris the V’s wonderful win at Le Mans in 2007, of course)
On a personal front, the work on the Shadowfax continues slowly. Yesterday I took the badly corroded fork sliders to a local chrome workshop only to be told that it could cost at least $500 PER LEG for them to strip and re-chrome them. To be fair, the business specialises in repairing hydraulic rams on industrial machinery and they price their services accordingly, but, not for this little black duck. Especially since the good guys at Z-Power in Wollongong (15 minutes up the road) can supply me with a pair of brand new, warrantied fork legs for $249 !! As already stated, I want to maintain as much originality as I can, but this is one area where new parts will have to be used.
Finally, remember that 70’s song, “Signs, signs” ?? Well here’s one that Marco didn’t want to see…
D’oh!
