Exactly 20 years ago in MotoGP's 2002 debut season, Suzuki was the leading member of the supporting cast to the Honda/Yamaha duopoly – a year that very much represented work-in-progress for the company's new V4 four-stroke GSV-R prototype. Now, for the second time in two decades, the Japanese company is walking away from GP racing at the end of this season, saying sayonara to the MotoGP paddock after the Valencia GP on November 6, officially ending any further factory involvement in road racing in any category, even endurance, where it is the reigning FIM World Champion, having won the title eight times in the past 12 years with the GSX-R1000.
After starting work on its first MotoGP contender very late in the day compared to its two main Japanese rivals – it did so only in the aftermath of regaining the 500GP world title in 2000 with its RGV500 twostroke – Suzuki finally took the decision only in October 2001, just six months before the start of the 2002 Grand Prix season, to be there on the starting grid at Suzuka in April for the first-ever race under the new four-stroke formula. It then spent a development season doing all its testing in the open by actually going racing with its new bike, rather than spending a year in closed circuit R&D with occasional wild card race outings.
There was nearly an improbable victorious pay-off for that effrontery, too, with Suzuki factory tester Akira Ryo leading pre-season favourite Valentino Rossi's RC211V Honda throughout the wet Japanese GP aboard his Dunlop-shod GSV-R before narrowly losing out on victory in the closing laps to the reigning 500cc world champion, albeit still finishing second on the new V4 Suzuki. Fairy-tale stuff.
But Team Suzuki riders Kenny Roberts and Sete Gibernau found it less easy in successive races to bring the new bike into contention on a dry track, especially using the Dunlop tyres Suzuki switched to while all its Honda and Yamaha mounted four-stroke rivals remained on Michelins, as did the leading remaining 500cc two-strokes. Switching back
