The first scenarios are beginning to take shape behind Suzuki’s farewell to MotoGP: such a sudden decision that even Dorna (who went to counterattack) was left in the dark. Now it seems that behind the choice of the board of directors there is the specter of the dieselgate
Lto the news that Suzuki would have left MotoGP at the end of 2022 it landed on the paddock of the world championship taking everyone by surprise. The pilots, the team, the Dorna. And if there is still no official statement from the Japanese, Carmelo Ezpeleta has already moved to recall the existence of heavy penalties in case of breach of contract. Because Suzuki, as well as other manufacturers, had signed only a short time ago a 5 year agreement with the organizer to take part in the MotoGP. The news, once spilled on the paddock, shocked the riders market – which travels sensationally on the downside – and put the members of Team Eicstar Suzuki, currently on foot and looking for accommodation, at a crossroads. Despite the fact that the president of Suzuki Motor Corporation Hiroshi Tsuda he would have been firmly against giving up MotoGP, the board of directors would have left him no other choice.
Land reasons, of course, they are of an economic nature. A MotoGP team like Suzuki – certainly not the most lavish in the paddock – must incur a cost of around thirty million euros per season, a figure evidently judged too high to continue. Such major companies, however, do not move with quarterly investment plans and give up racing without a minimum of planning it’s at least bizarre, especially if we consider the hiring of Livio Suppo as the new Team Manager at the beginning of the year. It is true that the pandemic continues to cause severe economic instability, but when Suzuki has signed with Dorna to continue until 2026 it was April 2021, a full year after the start of the emergency.
In these hours the idea that, behind this clumsy maneuver, there is a real scandal ready to invest the Japanese manufacturer is gaining momentum. It seems, in fact, that in Europe – Germany, Hungary and Italy – checks and searches are underway by the competent authorities following the possibility that Suzuki has placed on the market 22,000 diesel vehicles with emission counterfeiting systems. Specifically, as reported by Speedweek, the cars involved should be Suzuki S Cross, Swift e Vitara. We are talking about dieselgate again, seven years after 2015, which changed the automotive industry forever, pushing it hard towards electrification. For the more distracted, various manufacturers (starting with the Volkswagen Group, continuing with FCA and others) have used software to deceive the homologation checks on emissions for Euro5 engines, an additional control unit capable of returning different values to the real ones. Which, of course, has triggered a long series of sanctions on car manufacturers by governments and consumer protection bodies. It remains to be understood why the measures against the Hamamatsu House have only been taken now and if there are other builders involved in the investigation. If Suzuki will be fined (and how much) it is early to say and, probably, we will never really know if the fear of major economic repercussions caused by this story was what convinced the Japanese brand’s executives to leave MotoGP or if, simply, the investors decided to change course based on on balance sheet data.
