This is the last one. When Suzuki left the MotoGP world championship for the last time at the end of the 2011 season, it was back in just three years with a redesigned and relaunched racing program, which it started working on almost immediately after it parked its bike at the end of its “last” race.
Fans of the brand can now look forward to the brand’s next departure at the end of 2022 with some optimism.
However, this time around, the circumstances are very different, making it difficult to see that optimism as anything other than wishful thinking.
MotoGP was a totally different title when Suzuki last quit. The brand contribution was diving as the 2008 monetary accident began to be felt, with individual Japanese maker Kawasaki previously leaving the series just two years sooner.
However, despite these difficulties, Suzuki did everything in their power to stay in the race. First, it reduced the team to just one rider for 2011—the newly crowned 2022 World Superbike champion Alvaro Bautista—then waited until after the very last race of the year at Valencia to announce the team’s withdrawal in the hopeless hope that the team could be saved.
And despite the fact that it may have left, Suzuki insisted at the time that its exit from MotoGP was not a complete withdrawal from the sport; rather, it was merely a brief hiatus to allow the company to recuperate from the effects of the previous seasons. Suzuki’s return in 2014 was a goal from the day it announced its departure.
At the time, it stated, “Suzuki Motor Corporation has decided to suspend temporarily its participation in FIM Road Racing Grand Prix MotoGP from 2012.”
“This suspension is necessary to deal with difficult circumstances, primarily brought on by the prolonged recession in developed nations, an appreciation of the Japanese yen over time, and numerous natural disasters.
“Suzuki will now concentrate on developing a competitive new racing machine for that class with an eye toward returning to MotoGP in 2014,” the statement reads.
This is demonstrated not only by Suzuki’s withdrawal from MotoGP and the Endurance World Championship, where it was the defending champion but also by the model lineup for its road bikes in 2023.
As tightening Euro 5 emission standards caught up with its lack of development, the GSX-R1000 will no longer be sold in Europe beginning in 2023, following in the footsteps of its 600cc and iconic 750cc models; The current model’s 1000cc engine is essentially the same as the 2017 L7 version, which was an update to the 2009 specification.
Furthermore, the core of the matter is that with no sports bikes to sell, there’s very little point in having a dashing project, particularly for a brand that concedes that (in this present reality where any semblance of Honda and Yamaha go hustling to sell underbone bikes in Indonesia and India) it actually sees the motivation behind its hustling program as being to sell race copies for the street.
It’s possible that there is a path forward that will lead Suzuki back to MotoGP in the future, especially given that the championship will move to India in 2023, a key market for Suzuki, and is working to incorporate more and more green technology.
However, in contrast to 2011, this time there is absolutely no clear path forward.