Exerted from atvscene.com...


This year should be very interesting to say the least. Bill Ballance keeps his number one plate from last year, but it won't be on the front of Bill's familiar 250R. He'll be riding with help from Yoshimura, Roll Design, LRD and American Suzuki on their new QuadSport Z400. Yes you're reading this correctly. Suzuki is actually going to help out a racer. Question is, will he be able to keep up this year on a new and unproven race quad? Ballance is pretty positive that he can win on the machine. Like I said it will be an interesting year. Since 1984 when Ted Trey won the GNCC pro title, it has been nothing but Hondas winning the pro class championships.

 

Funny how nobody replied... lol... This is pretty big news...

 

i think its great news. hopefully pretty soon all the companys will have factory teams for quads. i hope i race on team suzuki one day.

 

I'm just worried about one thing. Remember how Suzuki sponsored a quad racing series? Well that was just a promotional tool for their LT250R. I'm worried that Suzuki AND Cannondale are just using team sponsorships as a promotional tool... I know that IS what they are doing, but I just don't want them to sponsor a few riders, get the Cannondale/Suzuki name out, and then just drop the whole thing. That is practically what Suzuki did with that quad racing series... The series was doing good, lots of people attended, and then they just dropped it. I'm not bashing and saying that these are bad companies (I own a C-dale and love it and their customer service is great) but I'm afraid that they will try to get sales up and then not care anymore. I'm TRYING not to get my hopes up. That's kind of hard to do, but sorry to say, I don't expect this to last long.

 

Very intresting point... Hmmmmm... I would suggest E-mailing Cannondale to voice your concerns...

 

i agree... very interesting point, i did not know that suzuki did that when they introduced the quadracer. if they do just sponsor a team or riders for one series/year, and if they do increase sales b/c of the sponsorship, and actually use input from the riders to continually improve the machine, it would be a very good thing... and you would think they would continue doing it... it would make absolutely no sense not to do so.
but, if they drop it after the first year, what can be done? what can we, the end consumer, do to send a loud and clear message that we disapprove of them acting this way?
personally, i'm going to watch the performance of the Z400 in the races, long and short term tests, experiences of owners, and how suzuki treats this....long before i buy one, which (right now) is far from this year.

 

First off bill ballance will win no matter what he rides, this past years iron man, he wasn't on his R, he was on a 400EX.
Win on sunday, sells on monday, this is the only reason the factory backs teams, and thier is no other reason. Suzuki and all the other manufacturers are into selling quads, as far as sapport, yah, but selling quads is what they do, it's what thier in biz for, and picking bill ballance with youshy too, well looks like ballance takes another title.
With youshy on thier side, well don't wait up at nights waiting on one of youshies quads to fail.

 

I was under the impression that when Suzuki dropped out of racing it was in response to all the bad publicity concerning ATV's and pressure on the manufacturers from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

 

It was a combination of political and economic reasons on why all the manufacturers pulled out of organized series racing. But, it is more than tens year later and with a much more responsible rider base that Suzuki finally approaches the sport side of the market again. Kawasaki has already shown that factory support help gets the word out on their machines, and Cannondale will only survive from this type of publicity. Makes sense for Suzuki to do this. If Honda was in Suzuki's poor sales status you know damn well that Big Red would have some factory quad riders. That is the same reason Yamaha hasn't fielded a team. The sales are there and the magazines give the Raptor and Banshee all the free publicity they need.

It will be cool to see Yokley and Ballance dicing it up on non-Honda based machines. Throw a Cannondale rider (Kim Kuhlne?) in there and brand-loyalty will start kicking in. Having different manufacturers besides the custom 250R-based quads will make the series ALOT more interesting to people.

 

Kory Ellis will be racing a Cannondale, as well. His quad looks great with racing plastic!