Sunday will be Chris Vermeulen’s fourth to last race in MotoGP with Rizla Suzuki, because next year the Aussie rider will be heading to the World Superbike Championship with Paul Bird’s Motorsport Kawasaki Racing Team.
Vermeulen has signed a two year deal that was finalised with Kawasaki boss Ichiro Yoda at Estoril on the eve of this Estoril MotoGP weekend.
Chris Vermeulen:“It’s a really good deal and I’m excited about joining Kawasaki from the technical point of view, to race and develop the bike next year and then go out on the new bike for 2011.
World Superbikes is going to be their main project, they are pulling out of MotoGP and they will not be running an AMA team nor a team in the Australian Superbike championship.
This WSB program is where all their engineers and budget will be focused.
They haven’t won in WSB for a long time and they really want to win races.
The financial backing and resources is very good for this project.
Vermeulen had also been linked to Aprilia and Yamaha in WSBK and Pramac Ducati, Yamaha Tech 3 in MotoGP.
It seems that Kawasaki are also talking with Shane Byrne and Tom Sykes about the second seat in the team, which would leave both Makoto Tamada and Broc Parkes out of a ride.