WSBK » PBM becomes Kawasaki's official team

Good - it sounds like Kawasaki may be making more of an effort than in recent years. Hopefully they will sustain that effort for the long-term.

A poison chalice for PBM if you ask me. How long has the ZX10 been around? The things still not competitive and I can't see them making a quantum leap in performance. Midfield again in 2009 at most.

Donnie - That's why I mentioned long term - if Kawasaki are serious they need to make a long term committment and seriously increase the funding and resources. Their recent efforts have been haphazard. they cannot expect to become a top team over the course of one season - it will take several seasons and probably several different editions of the ZX10R. Personally I think they would be better off doing one series and doing it well rather than their 2008 practice of bringing up the rear in every series they enter.

Funding and resources still won't make a silk purse from a sows ear.

How long before Birdy 'spits his dummy'?

There won't be any dummy spitting, finally somebody else will be footing the bill for his race team so I would imagine it will be a lot easier for him to keep his emotions in check.

Paul Bird has put a lot of his personal money into bikesport and we should be grateful for that, now he has got manufacturer support an enthusiast like himself richly deserves.

Good luck to them, I hope it all works out.

Dave. It was more a comment on the state of Kawasaki than PBM.
I agree, Paul has given much to the sport and has also achieved a great deal and should rightly be commended for it, however despite his team now being sponsored by a factory, one has to look at that factory itself. I cannot see Mr Bird going along with Kawasakis lack of effort and response. It's not only WSBK but MotoGP as well where this is evident. Personally I would like to see Kawasaki achieve good results through PBM, but until it hapens I will remain unconvinced that PB will be associated with Kawasaki past the first contracted season.

Kwak and Bird deserve each other. They've not made a decent race bike in any form for god knows how many years.

Paul Bird is an utter pr1ck - the way he's treated Lavilla this season is despicable and i'm glad that Greg has acted like the gent that he is and hasn't commented. Especially after he's outperformed Walker - the golden boy who was going to solve all Bird's problems. HAH!

Kawi hasn't been able to get a good race bike out in the world series, but in local series they have been doing very well.

In Canada they've won the 600 and 1000cc series a couple years in a row.
In the US they won suportsport a couple times recently, and almost won the superstock (750cc at the time) series with the 636 a couple years ago.

They've also been doing well in Japan and a bunch of other local series.

I wish they'd step up their international programs more too. It seems they deep national series more important.

Jamie hacking hasn't been doing that bad in ama either, i hope it goes well and love the way pb speaks his mind and why not when you've spent what he has. Lavilla can only ride a perfect bike, colin wright has said the same so i can understand pb's frustrations.