CAS Honda turns down Brown.

CAS Honda team owner Harry Ainsworth has revealed that talks between his team and AMA ace Mike Brown have broken down and that as a result the American will not be competing for the team in the 2005 MX2 Motocross World Championship.

"After a meeting with the team personnel, we have decided not to go with Brown," Ainsworth confirmed.

Instead, the team will concentrate most of its efforts on winning the MX1 World Motocross championship with New Zealand's Josh Coppins.

"After a long negotiation period we have decided it is better to put all our efforts into backing Josh to win the MX1 championship. We felt it would be better for the team and for Josh if we put all out efforts into his fight for the title," Ainsworth explained.

"We are also looking at Jussi Vehvilainen (lower pic) finishing top five in the class and I think if we do everything a little better we can reach our goals for '05. The complete team needs to work harder and be a little more professional, and then we can be a success."

Ainsworth believes that running just two riders in 2005 will give the team the best chance to take Coppins to that elusive world title and added that, while Brown might well have been a great addition to the team, they consider him something of an unknown quantity.

"We could have gone with Brown, but it might not have turned out (well)," said Ainsworth. "He's a good rider, but the way it would have worked we could have put a big effort in and come up with nothing, it was a big gamble, financially and also doubling the work load for the team, and at this stage we felt it better to do one thing correct, than two things wrong."

CAS Honda are now busy moving their workshops to Belgium where they will be based throughout the 2005 season.