USA Insider No.31 presented by Fly Racing – Suzuki’s restructuring

Welcome to our weekly web-exclusive column, Transmoto USA Insider Presented By Fly Racing. Penned each week by our man on the ground, Transmoto’s US Correspondent, Jason Weigandt, USA Insider presents the story-behind-the-stories of the AMA supercross and motocross scene.

The weekend of the Motocross of Nations, big news broke about Suzuki’s racing effort in the U.S. – which currently employs Aussie’s Brett Metcalfe. While it was already known that Ryan Dungey has left for a new job at KTM, what was not expected was for over 30 American Suzuki employees to get laid off, including long-time Suzuki racing bosses Mike Webb and Ray Tetherton. Once word got out that these two were gone, everyone expected to hear that the team was folding altogether.

Not quite. I contacted Suzuki’s PR agency and my contact there could only confirm that the racing team was indeed undergoing a restructuring. What’s that mean? More digging through rumours indicates this story may be less juicy than we first thought. I’d put good odds on Webb and Tetherton being rehired by Yoshimura, and then running the Suzuki race team from there. That may sound strange, but Suzuki’s factory AMA Road Racing effort has been run by Yoshimura employees and at the Yoshimura shop for many years now – and Australians know full well how strong that program has been, thanks to the efforts of Matt Mladin.

A few years back, Suzuki cut their factory motocross mechanics loose, and Yoshimura picked them up. They still work on the factory team bikes. And Webb, the Team Manager, has an office at the Yoshimura building. In other words, this could be a smooth transition, done merely for accounting purposes, with Suzuki potentially running the same team but using Yoshimura to handle the work. I’ve even heard one person indicate that Metcalfe will end up riding under the same tent as he did this year, and by the time the Anaheim Supercross rolls around, you won’t even realise any of this happened!

But it could have other impacts. Suzuki bikes have been linked to a variety of riders, including James Stewart. I’ve heard all kinds of stories, such as Stewart joining the Joe Gibbs Racing team, and the squad switching to yellow. And Chad Reed had great success on yellow bikes in 2009, could he switch back?

From what I’m hearing, Suzuki may eventually get their racing efforts back on track, but this is a critical time when most of the big riders and teams need to move forward. This reorganisation has undoubtedly complicated that – to the point where we may indeed see only Metty on a yellow 450 next year, despite how many other top riders wish they could ride the bikes as well.