French rider Sylvain Guintoli may have walked away from his ride at Alstare Suzuki, but he is not going to sit out the 2011 FIM World Superbike Championship. We will next see Guintoli line up on the grid astride a privateer Ducati entry for next year’s racing series. He will be there courtesy of Liberty Cz Group, which will field a new a new Prague, Czech Republic, based team that will also feature WSB regular Jakub Smrz; it is to be called Liberty Ducati, appropriately enough.
During the 2010 WSB season, Guintoli managed quite well. He finished up in seventh overall, which demonstrates well his consistency as he was the highest placed rider not to podium all season. Alstare Suzuki, supposed to be the ‘factory’ Suzuki team in WSB, has yet to receive confirmation from the Japanese headquarters that this will be the case in 2011. Due to this unanswered question - and to the disgracefully tiny amount of support Suzuki provided the Alstare team for the 2010 season - Leon Haslam departed the team back in September to ride for BMW. Team manager Francis Batta understood that departure, empathized with Guintoli’s decision, and laid the blame directly on the Japanese factory. But he also went ahead and signed Michel Fabrizio to Alstare for the 2011 season. We will have to wait and see how that works out.
Guintoli will be moving to another non-factory mount, but at least he knows this going in this time. With the Ducati team, he will likely get some decent support, especially if he places well at each round. Ducati likes to see success and they tend to reward it – this may be especially so given the Italian marque’s ‘official’ exit from this series and the fact that Ducati is a racing company at its heart.
Sylvain Guintoli has been put into positions that most racers would surely envy, and this next year is no different. But, he also has often had to race against superior machinery and, again, this will be the same. However, he has learned some significant lessons about how to deal with such issues. Will there be an improvement to his finishes in 2011? Watch the FIM World Superbike Championship and we will all find out.
