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HRC Sever Ties With Doohan (HRC rompe i legami con Doohan)
The Times They Are A Changin' (I tempi stanno cambiando)
by toby hirst, in London
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
HRC racing bosses have announced there will be a parting of the ways between the Honda Racing Corporation and five time 500cc World Champion, Mick Doohan. The man that won 54 Grand Prix and recorded 58 pole positions over a career that lasted ten years, and whose contract as General Manager of the HRC racing concern expired at the end of the 2004 season, will not be returning to the Honda fold in 2005.
Satoru Horiike, the Managing Director of HRC, made the announcement yesterday at the Sepang circuit where the HRC racing hierarchy were present to keep watch over the factory race team at the MotoGP winter test at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia.
With the Repsol works squad team structure having undergone a major facelift during the enforced Dorna test ban, with 70% of the staff within the team having been released, the final nail in the coffin of change was the releasing of Doohan from his duties within that factory team framework.
Doohan, who had been an advisor to the Repsol team riders and team staff, will be missing from the HRC line-up for the first time since he first rode for the Rothmans Honda team, on the NSR500, back in 1989. Doohan's racing career was ended following a violent crash during practice for the 1999 Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez and the punishment his body had taken throughout that record littered career, including the horrific injuries sustained at Assen in 1992, had finally caught up with the Australian and he was forced into retirement.
With Jeremy Burgess having left the HRC works team to defect to Yamaha for the 2004 season, and in doing so taking most of the Doohan championship winning crew with him, and with the poor season relatively speaking from the Repsol team last season, the overhaul of the team structure has left no place for Doohan.
The changes within the Repsol team have been far reaching and the restructuring started last season with the dismissal of most of Nicky Hayden's crew prior to the Malaysian Grand Prix. And, it's not just amongst the garage staff where changes have been made.
The structure of the racing hierarchy from the boardroom to pit-lane level has been revised also with Tsutomu Ishii appointed as General Manager, Makoto Tanaka replacing Shoji Tachikawa as Repsol Honda Team Manager, and Erv Kanemoto being installed as Technical Consultant and advisor to works riders Max Biaggi and Nick Hayden.
With the approach to running the HRC Racing program having been overhauled, with the aforementioned changes having taken place throughout the team structure and with this latest news on the departure of Mick Doohan, it's a new beginning for the orange wearing Honda MotoGP employees.
The times they are a changin'
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