Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1193082
IN THE WIND P58 Team Hammer Named As Suzuki's Premier Road Race Team T eam Hammer, run by father and son John and Chris Ulrich, will take over the running of the Suzuki MotoAmerica racing business, spelling an end to a 41- year partnership for Suzuki and Yoshimura. Team Hammer has enjoyed enormous racing success with privately run Suzuki machinery, having been founded over 30 years ago by John Ulrich. To date, riders on bikes prepared and fielded by the team have earned an accumulated seven AMA Pro and MotoAmerica Na- tional titles while racking up 83 race victories and 234 podium finishes in MotoAmerica Super- bike, MotoAmerica Supersport, MotoAmerica Twins Cup, AMA Formula Xtreme, AMA 750cc Su- persport, and AMA Pro Daytona Sportbike. In 2019, the Team Hammer run Team M4 Ecstar Suzuki took championship wins with Bobby Fong (Supersport) and Alex Du- mas (Twins Cup), with the team's lone Superbike rider, Jake Lewis, finishing the season in eighth on the GSX-R1000R. As such, Team Hammer will field Suzuki's entry in the Mo- toAmerica Superbike, Supers- port, Stock 1000 and Twins Cup championships, although it is unclear who will be riding each machine. The dissolving of the Yoshimu- ra Suzuki partnership spells an end to one of the most success- ful seen in motorcycle racing any- where in the world. Stretching 41 years, Yoshimura Suzuki took 212 race wins and 14 Championships in the AMA Superbike class, the most of any manufacturer, with Australian Mat Mladin the most successful AMA Superbike rider of all time with six champi- onship wins. "Though Yoshimura won't be operating our road racing team moving forward, we look forward to continuing together in many other aspects of our business." Graeber noted that Yoshimura remains integral with JGR/Su- zuki, the company's supercross/ motocross race team, as well as several sales and mar- keting programs. The move to a separate team for Suzuki's race program echoes the move made earlier this year by Yamaha, which dissolved its racing arm and handed opera- tional control for the MotoAmer- ica program to Attack Perfor- mance. As such, there are now no in-house run factory teams competing in MotoAmerica. CN Fong races the Team Hammer M4 Ecstar Suzuki to the finish to win the 2019 MotoAmerica Supersport title. Team Hammer will now take over Suzuki's MotoAmerica race operations going forward.