Kawasaki Motors Racing was the European subsidiary of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, which is located in Netherlands. It is responsible for managing the racing activities of the MotoGP team and any other motorcycle racing activities the Kawasaki Heavy Industries Motorcycle & Engine division may enter in the future.
The subsidiary was set up in 2007 as a result of the Japanese manufacturer's recent necessary split from Harald Eckl. The reason for the split was Eckl’s involvement with a competitor's MotoGP activities, which forced Kawasaki to terminate the relationship immediately. For the first time since Kawasaki returned to the premier class of motorcycle racing, the team became a complete ‘in house’ factory team.
In 2003 the Kawasaki Racing Team was formed after Kawasaki had developed their new 990cc ZX-RR bike throughout 2002 and raced it in the last race of the 2002 MotoGP season. Harald Eckl was made team manager with the team being based in Germany. It wasn't until 2004 that Kawasaki had two riders - Alex Hofmann and Shinya Nakano, who raced for the entire season. Nakano placed 3rd in Japan that year achieving Kawasaki's first podium finish in MotoGP.
Read more about Kawasaki Motors Racing: 2007 MotoGP Season, 2008 MotoGP Season, 2009 MotoGP Season
Famous quotes containing the words motors and/or racing:
“When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country’s ready to let go. You heard of that market crash in ‘29? I predicted that.... I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said; nerves, I said. Then I asked myself, “What’s General Motors got to be nervous about?” “Overproduction,” I says. “Collapse.””
—John Michael Hayes (b. 1919)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)