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  Új Válasz 2007-05-16 20:04:28 #3962

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  Ten Kate To MotoGP in '08?
  dutch team at a philosophical crossroads
  by dean adams
  Tuesday, May 15, 2007
  
  Much has been made of Ron ten Kate's visit to a MotoGP event earlier this year. Brave pundits predict that ten Kate will have a team in the MotoGP championship in 2008--with James Toseland as their rider.
  
  Toseland may be in MotoGP next year. The series desperately needs a British rider and let's face it, Toseland is riding better this year than quite a few current MotoGP pilots.
  
  But ten Kate in MotoGP? Doubtful.
  
  Brothers Garret and Ronald ten Kate, who run the ten Kate Honda effort, are hard-working, pragmatic and cautious people. This is evidenced by what the Dutch team has accomplished in World Superbike racing.
  
  They were once a scrappy, bare-bones Supersport team, fully entrenched in the glorified club racing atmosphere where good weekends are when the entire crew bails into a single hotel room where they enjoy hot showers. Normal races are when you wake up with the smell of cold steel in your nose because the floor of the van is under your face.
  
  From these primitive beginnings, the gigantic ten Kate effort was born. Looking out in the paddock here at Monza, ten Kate have one of the largest hospitality units in a small sea of hospitality units. Their riders are currently leading both the Supersport and Superbike championship standings.
  
  I think the ten Kate fellows are astute enough to recognize potential financial suicide when they see it. And without a huge sponsor to fund a MotoGP effort, any team puts itself in harm's way when costs increase dramatically without any kind of return.
  
  Ron ten Kate spoke at length with Soup reporter Glenn Le Santo at Donington Park about a potential move to MotoGP.
  
  ''Looking at MotoGP, it seems the team are finding it difficult to fund their efforts in MotoGP. They now have to do workshops in MotoGP to see new ways to raise money. The costs in MotoGP have gone up so much because they have tried to transform motorcycle racing into F1 racing. The sponsors are not coming,'' ten Kate said.
  
  ''Things are not in balanced in MotoGP,'' ten Kate said, inferring that the money teams can acquire in sponsorship are not in line with the costs of running a team. ''Here in WSBK there is a fine balance for the sponsors. The exposure they get is in line with what they spend.''
  
  ''We have four riders in the Superbike and Supersport championships, a big crew and good equipment,'' ten Kate continued, ''and our budget is about half what a MotoGP would need.''
  
  Ten Kate does have a sponsor seemingly ready to fund a MotoGP effort--Hannspree screens.
  
  However, the ten Kate men must know that a change to MotoGP would probably mean a loss of control in their effort. It's an assurance that when teams change from a production championship to one where your bikes come in crates from the manufacturer that giant areas of personal tuning credo will disappear. Are ten Kate willing to give that up?
  
  The ten Kate philosophy on racing would make any mom and pop effort proud. Whatever they obtain in racing sponsorship money goes directly into the team--they take nothing out of the team in terms of income. Their dealership and line of aftermarket product provide them with income.
  
  ''If money comes in to the team, then we spend it on the team. We buy more equipment, hire more people or do more testing. We forbid ourselves long ago not to make any money from racing and in the early days it was easy to stick to that,'' ten Kate said with a laugh. ''But now we are the same. Everything we make from racing goes to the team.''
  
  Does MotoGP fit into the ten Kate way of racing? We shall see.
  
  ENDS

  ...egy fecske nem csinál nyarat, viszont egy hülye százat csinál...

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