Kawasaki will announce it is to pull out of MotoGP on Thursday morning, leaving John Hopkins and the seemingly luckless Marco Melandri looking for a ride in 2009.

Although it isn't yet known why the firm is withdrawing, the global economic crisis must be more than a factor, especially given the boss of Suzuki has hinted today the firm is in trouble and could be for sale.

Despite the fact Kawasaki Heavy Industries is a massive company, it has never spent anything like the money Honda has on racing and because Japan's economy is in dire straits, non-essential activities are bound to be the first things to go.

This leaves MotoGP with only 17 riders on the grid for next year.

The big problem with Kawasaki is they are so far wide of the mark in Moto GP, that to catch up they would have to pump in a hell of a lot of money, as you say the state of the economy at the moment just won`t allow his sort of investment and it must be getting harder and harder to find big money sponsers as well.

It is bad news though, Honda has allready pulled out of car GPs, may be this will be the excuse they need to withdraw from Moto GP as well ?? who knows ?? could be that the GPs this year will be cancelled !! or may be run with WSB !! all really bad news

PS,may be this should be in `general`

doesn't suprise me, they didn't join Grand Prix racing till 2003, to my recollection they never contended in the 2 stroke era and quite frankly haven't made any impact at all, including S/Bikes

Being a Hopper fan myself Im a little p***ed off at this news...yeah fair enough, he never had the best season in 2008 and yeah he did arse about a couple times but hey...come on guys...dont get rid of him or move him to AMA....we need some nice looking guys on that grid lol.... *sighs* Vale..your on your own