Yamaha WSS Boss To Be Lorenzo's Team Manager

After Yamaha's championship winning World Supersport team slipped quietly into oblivion, as first reported here at MotoMatters.com, the victim of the global economic crisis, the question most frequently raised was what would happen to the team's highly successful team manager, former 250cc racer Wilco Zeelenberg. The Dutchman had a proven record with Yamaha's WSS team, culminating in Cal Crutchlow's dominating championship in the team's final season. Given both his record and his long association with Yamaha, surely he would find a role somewhere?

That somewhere turns out to be inside the Fiat Yamaha MotoGP team, according to reports in Motorcycle News. Zeelenberg is being tipped to replace the departing Daniele Romagnoli as team manager for Jorge Lorenzo's side of the garage. Romagnoli ostensibly departed the team to look for a more technical role, but reports in the authoratitive German language magazine Speedweek indicate that the real cause of the rift were internal disagreements between Romagnoli and Lorenzo's crew chief Ramon Forcada. Romagnoli has since move on to become Raffaele de Rosa's crew chief in the Tech 3 Moto2 squad.

With Zeelenberg out of the World Supersport equation, Yamaha's World Supersport effort is now officially - if implicitly - dead. Yamaha had given notice to the team members back in September that their contracts would not be renewed, and were looking for a private team to take over the running of the team, while Yamaha would concentrate on bike and engine preparation. No takers have been found for this role, however, and one by one, Yamaha's privateer teams have quietly switched allegiance, the Lorenzini by Leoni team being the latest, switching from Yamaha to Kawasaki. The prospect of the World Supersport grid being devoid of Yamahas, while the YZF-R6 continues to dominate the European Superstock grid is as realistic as it is bizarre.