By Dean Adams“We’ve been offered a deal, that includes something we’ve been waiting for almost since we started with Tech3 and I couldn’t say no.”
As suggested here before: Tech 3 MotoGP is basically a World Superbike team racing in MotoGP. Their budgets are paltry and their resources are augmented by the fact that in order to survive they have to make $15000 in sponsorship look like $50,000.
So what is the “something we’ve been waiting for”?
Bikes that don’t come with an invoice or the Tuning Fork Shun. Tech 3 has to buy/lease everything from Yamaha. And as always with Yamaha there is the ‘you’re lucky to be getting this, and where is your first born?’ corporate attitude. Moreover, certainly Poncheral knows that the easiest way to get the Tuning Fork Shun is to ask for the same level of equipment as the factory Yamaha bikes.
A real MotoGP team budget. In 2011, when longtime Tech 3 crewchief Guy Coulon was charged with manslaughter for running over a motorcyclist while driving the team truck to a race the overwhelming reaction, aside from sympathy for the well-liked Coulon for making that kind of error was this: WHY IS A GENIUS LIKE COULON DRIVING A TEAM TRUCK? Welcome to, as Kevin Cameron aptly termed it ‘paying yourself with your own enthusiasm’. This will work while young or fresh but after a few decades …
A factory that will pay the riders. Tech 3 riders are contracted through Tech 3, not Yamaha. Again, the budgets are minuscule. For decades the Tech 3 team was a way station for riders to get somewhere else. One Tech 3 rider who went to the Ducati factory team said his Ducati signing bonus was more than he made at Tech 3 the entire time he raced there.
Free bikes, more budget and a factory that will employ and pay top riders to work at Tech 3?
Sounds like KTM to me.
