Dungey, Moss To Lead Suzuki (updated)

Kit Palmer | December 6, 2009

Suzuki announced its race teams for the 2010 season at the Long Beach Motorcycle Show on Friday, with team manager Roger DeCoster confirming that Ryan Dungey will lead the team in the 450cc class and that he’ll be joined there by young Australian Matt Moss. The Lites team will feature just one rider, Austin Stroupe.”I was very worried at the end of this year,” DeCoster said. “We had a fantastic year, results wise, and there were so many rumors about the industry being down and particular rumors about Suzuki maybe not racing. I’m glad that Mr. Tanaka, our big boss, believes in racing and believes in the sport and believes that the racing is an important vehicle to sell motorcycles. I’m very thankful that he’s going to allow us to keep racing at a very high level. Our riders this year on the 450 are going to be Ryan Dungey and the second 450 rider will be Matt Moss, who by the way won the Australian Supercross Championship with two events to go on the new 250. That 250 was pretty much a stock bike and his lap times were comprable to the lap times of Chad Reed, who is winning the 450 class. On the Lites we will have Austin Stroupe and our testing is going really well and so is the 450. I expect that we will be in the hunt for championships this year.”In addition to the rider changes, the Rockstar Makita team will also be working more closely with Yoshimura in 2010 as all the teams move under the Yosh banner.”I’m also very happy to be working even closer now with Yoshimura,” DeCoster said. “We already have been working pretty much together for the past six years. We have been in their facilities and this is only going to make things better. I look for a great year for Suzuki and let’s all be positive and put the bad news behind us and go racing.”

On the road racing front, the Rockstar Makita Suzuki team will feature Tommy Hayden and Blake Young in the American Superbike class with Suzuki opting to continue its support of Team M4 Suzuki in the Daytona SportBike class. The M4 Suzuki team will be a one-rider squad with Martin Cardenas headlining the team. Suzuki will also support Richie Morris Racing and Danny Eslick in next year’s Daytona SportBike class.Suzuki added that it will again continue to support the Jordan Suzuki team but riders have yet to be announced. Suzuki will also continue you to support the Kevin Schwantz and Jason Pridmore advanced street-bike riding schools.In off-road, Australian Josh Strang has resigned with Suzuki to compete in the 2010 Grand National Cross Country Series.