until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
New Suzuki MotoGP team boss Livio Suppo has laid out his plans for the defending world championship-winning team’s future in his first appearance in blue at the opening round of the 2022 season in Qatar.
Appointed only days before the first race, the highly-experienced former Ducati and Honda boss says that despite not having had much time to prepare, he nonetheless knows what he wants to happen in the immediate future.
Signed up to the role on a multi-year contract only days before he was announced after initial negotiations went quiet at the end of 2021, he brings a vast amount of experience to the role having won titles with Casey Stoner and Marc Marquez in the past. And, with that experience, Suppo says that it’s pretty obvious where he needs to start.
“Joan and Alex are two of the strongest riders out there for sure,” he said, “and the bike is good because they won a title two years ago. Without the crash in Jerez [for Rins] it could probably have been possible for them to do one-two in 2020, so the team is there, the bike is there, the riders are there, and the atmosphere in the team is good thanks to the job that Davide [Brivio] has done.
“My first job now is trying to remember the name of everyone in the team, because there are many of them and it’s a nightmare! Apart from joking though, when you have two strong riders like Joan and Alex, the priority is to keep them. It’s not easy to replace them, and this is the priority.
“But, on the other side – and maybe this is because I’m getting older – if the whole MotoGP paddock comes back to what we used to do 15 or 20 years ago, we would wait a little to make any decision. This could be good for the sport. I should be the last to speak about it because we made a move with Casey [Stoner signed from Ducati to Honda] in Jerez back in 2010, but I think it would be good.
“I understood why Ducati wanted to renew with Pecco [Bagnaia] now though, because if you can give them a good feeling for the future it is good, and maybe it could be the same for us. Why not? But for the team, the company and the rider it’s always good to wait a few more races.”
He’s also insistent that despite Suzuki taking some 14 months to find a replacement for former boss Davide Brivio after his surprise move to Alpine in F1, it was in the end the right move for both him and the team.
He was first speculated as the right man for the job in the days after Brivio’s shock departure, and he says that having a team with management by committee means he can now start without worrying about the legacy of his predecessor.
“Honestly, it’s not that it took so long,” he told The Race when questioned during the press conference. “It’s that they decided one year ago not to replace Davide. It’s not that they’ve been working on it for more than one year. Last year was a decision, and probably it has been a good decision.
“I was thinking before that if I had joined the team immediately after Davide left, it probably wouldn’t have been the same for me or for the team. So maybe, in the end, this one season without a team manager is good to do the next step.”
And while Brivio’s absence might have been very noted in 2021, when the team struggled without him, one part of his legacy very much remains in place – the attitude he created within the team.
It was always a mixture of two cultures thanks to a largely European race team and an Asian factory, and Suppo sounds confident that he’s found something that he can very much work with.
“Yesterday we had a speech with all the team,” the Italian explained, “to introduce myself, and I told them that my first feeling is that the team is a kind of a compromise between Ducati and Honda, the two teams I have worked with.
“It’s Japanese, but with a lot of Italian attitude, and the first feeling is that it’s a very good compromise between a fully Japanese company like Honda and a fully Italian company like Ducati.
