Suzuki has hired Livio Suppo as their new team manager. This is the biggest surprise in MotoGP team management since Livio Suppo was hired by Honda. We ask huh? what? and eh?
Who’s this Suppo geezer?
He’s the brilliant Italian team boss who started out with Ducati then did a moonlight flit to Honda. His people management skills are top class, so much so that he was especially known for his ability to work with whining wonderkid Casey Stoner. He left the Honda MotoGP project in 2017.
Why has he come back to MotoGP?
After leaving the paddock he ran an e-bike company. However, with the idiocies of lockdowns and the recent commencement of World War 3, the world economy has tanked and inflation is spiralling out of control. This has especially hit the electric bicycle market. The usual buyers can’t afford e-bikes any more because the prices of soy lattes and beard combs have gone through the roof.
Why did Suzuki hire him?
They’ve been rudderless since the departure of their old team boss David Brivio. We covered that story and named his probable successors at the time, but even we didn’t see Suzuki managing to bag the highly-rated Suppo.
What can Suppo do to turn the Suzuki ship around?
We have a few predictions of what the Italian will do to improve the Japanese manufacturer’s prospects:
Hire Maverick Vinales back.
The barking mad Spaniard is one of the fastest riders in MotoGP, but his brain exploded after he left Suzuki. With the combination of a sweet-handling, easy to set up bike and the family atmosphere of Suzuki under Suppo, Maverick can fight for the title.
Supply a satellite team with bikes.
Suzuki are at a disadvantage because they only have 2 riders on the grid, and those are a pair of largely identical Spaniards. Ducati, on the other hand, can count on the technical feedback of no less than 6 riders.
(Ducati actually have 8 riders on the grid for 2022, but 2 of them don’t count. Firstly, Rossi’s brother isn’t quick enough to provide relevant data. Secondly, Jackass Miller is super-quick, but his technical feedback is limited to saying “I fell off” or “I didn’t fall off.” According to team sources, the only thing that Jack developed on the factory Ducati was an intense dislike of Joan Mir.)
Persuade VR46 to become the Suzuki satellite team
For starters, Rossi is all about developing young riders these days. They’d be far better off starting out on a Suzuki than trying to tame the Bolognese Bucking Bronco. (For example, the promising rookie Jorge Martin was doing great in his first season until the Ducati spat him off in an accident so bone-crunching that it scored an 9 on the Crutchlow Scale.)
Secondly, all the cool kids on the internet have moved on from posting selfies in useless facemasks to painting everything yellow and light blue in an empty gesture of support for Ukraine (basically the Danilo Petrucci of former Soviet republics.)
Having a satellite team that combined Rossi’s favourite colour yellow with Suzuki’s light blue would totally DESTROY the Rooskies!!!!!!!111 As an added bonus, seeing Uccio’s flabby midriff bulging out between those two colours would make even the most battle-hardened Spetsnaz colonel upchuck his borsht and run away.
Conclusion
This is a huge win for Suzuki. Livio Suppo has one of the best records of any team boss, and if he can deal with Stoner he can deal with anyone. It’s great to have him back in MotoGP, and we look forward to him needling his former teams at every opportunity.