Corona Honda's Jake Holden (Photo: Brian J Nelson)

In the US a chaotic offseason and an uncertain future for the AMA Championship has led to a withdrawal from racing by Honda and a possible withdrawal by Yoshimura Suzuki and Kawasaki. Only Yamaha (among the big four Japanese factories) is 'all in' for the AMA season.

It looks now like the DMG model based on private teams like Jordan, Erion, Corona, M4 EMGO, and others carrying the ball for the manufacturers (Erion and Corona for Honda and M4 EMGO and Jordan for Suzuki) is the right idea at the right time, although I doubt that even Jimmy France saw this financial meltdown coming. (However, the Frances have prepared NASCAR much better than Ecclestone and the FIA have Formula 1 to withstand the hard times that have come.)

But the savings from pulling out of the AMA series are minor indeed compared to the costs of developing and racing the exotic MotoGP prototypes. Ironically it is the Japanese themselves who have painted themselves into the corner by creating a MotoGP class that burns through money. The MSMA, composed of engineers, need to be brought quickly into line by commercial bosses back in Japan, but this is unlikely given the blue sky and no limits racing philosophy of the racing people who sit at the MSMA table. Unless Dorna and the FIM combine to unilaterally withdraw from the agreements that give all rule-making to the engineers, the MotoGP house of cards may fall.

Why would Kawasaki, with virtually no hope of winning a race in the near future, continue, without a sponsor, to shoulder the costs of developing a money-burning 800 at a time when the Japanese stock market has lost 42% of its value in a single year and all responsible companies are tightening their belts?

Dorna have lost an opportunity to turn the tide. While F1 has been hard at work banning technological irrelevancies, Dorna has been tinkering with the new single tire rule (a step in the right direction but only a baby step) and professing impotency when talk turns to controlling electronics.

The fall of the Kawasaki ax is proof that plans that were approved in happier times will not necessarily be respected in the year-end company meetings in Japan -- as we have seen with Toyota’s decision to put the freeze on their plans to open a new Prius plant in Blue Springs, Mississippi.