What is Neil Hodgson doing...Waiting...
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Neil Hodgson is still waiting on a ride for 2007 and his best hope may not be able to get the motorcycles he wants.
The weekend after the final race for the Parts Unlimited Ducati team, at Mid-Ohio on October 1, Hodgson was in Magny-Cours, France to talk to Ducati about 2007. It was there that he was told that he wouldn’t be staying with Ducati, despite what he said were earlier assurances that he would be.
“I was sort of put in really awkward position with Ducati, because I truly believed, having spoken to them in some detail, that I was going to be the World Superbike rider with Troy Bayliss,” Hodgson said when reached at his home on the Isle of Man, “and by the time I found out, which was in Magny Cours, that that wasn’t going to happen, all the factory rides had gone. And pretty much I’d not pushed so, so hard in America, but pretty much everything had gone there as well. There weren’t many seats available anyway.” But Ducati Corse Director Paolo Ciabatti, who has the final say, said that he gave Hodgson no assurances.
“I have all friendship and respect for Neil [Hodgson], but Neil has a manager and the manager, which is Roger Burnett, was informed about the evolution of the situation,” Ciabatti said from his office in Bologna, Italy. “I never said - if somebody else said it is not my fault - but I never said that Neil would be for sure. I said he was one of the candidates for the ride. Gregorio Lavilla was another candidate, for example, and there were other options we were considering. I never said this is happening for sure.
“I never ruled it out until we took our decision, but I always kept Roger [Burnett] informed about the respect that there was a possibility, but that it was one of the possibilities, because for some reasons we keep it for ourselves and we don’t want to disclose, but we had also other options we wanted to consider. So actually, Roger was fully aware that it was never given for granted that Neil would get the job.”
Ducati chose to keep the 2006 Xerox Ducati team of World Champion Bayliss and Italian Lorenzo Lanzi intact for next season. But that didn’t stop Ciabatti from trying to keep Hodgson in the Ducati fold.
“Sometimes we hope we could have space on a Ducati team for all of our riders, because we like to keep them on Ducatis,” Ciabatti said, “and actually I tried my best with Roger [Burnett] in Valencia to manage to get Neil [Hodgson] a seat on the GP7 that d’Antin was going to race next year beside Alex Barros [in MotoGP]. But eventually, also for some reason, the team decided to sign again Alex Hofmann.”
“It has left me in a really, really bad position,” Hodgson said. “Just one of those things. There’s nothing I can do about. It’s the first time it’s happened in my career so I’m just hopefully going to try and weather the storm, get a good ride, and just bounce back. I’d love to come back to America, but there’s nothing available, but hopefully maybe for the next year.”
Hodgson said that he’s turned his attention to other World Superbike squads, “but I’m just waiting for a couple of teams that are really interested in me that are trying to secure sponsors, so I’m unfortunately having to wait for them to finalize their sponsorship before they can be in a position to really do anything.”
The most likely possibility is with Carl Fogarty, an option that once seemed unlikely. At Road Atlanta, Hodgson made it clear that he didn’t find teaming with Fogarty to be a very palatable option. The other team is Klaffi Honda, which ran Brazilian Alex Barros this year, but has no funding for 2007.
Ciabatti said the Fogarty option wouldn’t include Ducatis. At the Imola round of the World Superbike Championship, Ciabatti told Fogarty and his general manager that they had a deadline for ordering the F06 machines with traction control. He said, “Listen, I need to know in a week, because then it’s too late for us to order the material. So we will be more than happy for you to race with our bikes’ and then Carl [Fogarty] said, ‘I’ll do it only if Neil is riding ride for me,’ so it was in a way the perfect solution. But it didn’t materialize, unfortunately, because of probably Carl underestimating how difficult it is to find the money needed to run a professional team nowadays.
“From the moment we decided that Neil will be not our rider for 2007, we told Roger [Burnett] and we tried any other possibilities to keep him on a Ducati as much as we could, but unfortunately it didn’t work out. I can understand that he might be disappointed, because at the moment I think he’s without a ride and this is never good for a rider.”
As for Fogarty getting Ducati F06’s at this late date, Ciabatti said, “It’s impossible.” He continued: "The only bikes with the traction control system, four belong to us and we’ll race next year with the ‘06 bikes, the same bikes we’ve been using this season. The same goes with GSE Racing; they will use next year same bikes they have used this season [in British Superbike]. And the four AMA bikes we sold to the Borciani team for Ruben Xaus.”
Two will be used in World Superbike and the other two they will use for the Italian Championship with Marco Borciani, who’s the Italian champion. Fogarty’s only hope for Ducatis would be to buy the two bikes from Borciani, which would be very surprising, because Ciabatti spoke to Borciani Monday and was told that he has every intention to use this bikes himself.
“There aren’t any other bikes with traction control existing. And so there are only 12 bikes of this kind in the world.”
Borciani tried to craft a deal with Hodgson to race alongside former teammate Xaus, with whom Hodgson has a cool relationship, but the funding didn’t exist. Xaus indirectly attracted sponsorship from Spanish broadcaster Telecinco, but, according to Ciabatti, the team is still lacking a few hundred thousand Euros to run a second rider for a full season.
“So at the moment they are planning to do selected events with Marco Borciani and the Italian championship.”
Hodgson was one of three riders - Ben Bostrom and Aaron Yates were the others - vying for the Superstock seat at Yamaha that went to Bostrom.
“I was really interested in trying to hook up with a good manufacturer,” he said. “I had seen what Eric Bostrom had done. Seen what a great job he’d done and he told me how good Yamaha was and I was interested in doing what he did. Really, take a step sort of backwards/sideways, but really looking at the bigger picture. That’s something I really hoped was going to come off. At the last minute it didn’t work out. I was very disappointed, actually. That was one of those little secret deals I was doing, that I thought, when this comes off, everyone’s going to be surprised; they’ll think that I’ve taken a Superstock ride. But I knew what I was doing and I had a master plan and I was really positive about.
“Genuinely, If it could have gone to anybody, I was pleased it went to Ben, because I knew he was in an awkward position as well, where there weren’t a lot of opportunities for him. I was pleased for him and truly hope he does well on it.”
http://www.cyclenews.com/ShowStory.asp?HeadlineID=10278
Read on:
Neil Hodgson is still waiting on a ride for 2007 and his best hope may not be able to get the motorcycles he wants.
The weekend after the final race for the Parts Unlimited Ducati team, at Mid-Ohio on October 1, Hodgson was in Magny-Cours, France to talk to Ducati about 2007. It was there that he was told that he wouldn’t be staying with Ducati, despite what he said were earlier assurances that he would be.
“I was sort of put in really awkward position with Ducati, because I truly believed, having spoken to them in some detail, that I was going to be the World Superbike rider with Troy Bayliss,” Hodgson said when reached at his home on the Isle of Man, “and by the time I found out, which was in Magny Cours, that that wasn’t going to happen, all the factory rides had gone. And pretty much I’d not pushed so, so hard in America, but pretty much everything had gone there as well. There weren’t many seats available anyway.” But Ducati Corse Director Paolo Ciabatti, who has the final say, said that he gave Hodgson no assurances.
“I have all friendship and respect for Neil [Hodgson], but Neil has a manager and the manager, which is Roger Burnett, was informed about the evolution of the situation,” Ciabatti said from his office in Bologna, Italy. “I never said - if somebody else said it is not my fault - but I never said that Neil would be for sure. I said he was one of the candidates for the ride. Gregorio Lavilla was another candidate, for example, and there were other options we were considering. I never said this is happening for sure.
“I never ruled it out until we took our decision, but I always kept Roger [Burnett] informed about the respect that there was a possibility, but that it was one of the possibilities, because for some reasons we keep it for ourselves and we don’t want to disclose, but we had also other options we wanted to consider. So actually, Roger was fully aware that it was never given for granted that Neil would get the job.”
Ducati chose to keep the 2006 Xerox Ducati team of World Champion Bayliss and Italian Lorenzo Lanzi intact for next season. But that didn’t stop Ciabatti from trying to keep Hodgson in the Ducati fold.
“Sometimes we hope we could have space on a Ducati team for all of our riders, because we like to keep them on Ducatis,” Ciabatti said, “and actually I tried my best with Roger [Burnett] in Valencia to manage to get Neil [Hodgson] a seat on the GP7 that d’Antin was going to race next year beside Alex Barros [in MotoGP]. But eventually, also for some reason, the team decided to sign again Alex Hofmann.”
“It has left me in a really, really bad position,” Hodgson said. “Just one of those things. There’s nothing I can do about. It’s the first time it’s happened in my career so I’m just hopefully going to try and weather the storm, get a good ride, and just bounce back. I’d love to come back to America, but there’s nothing available, but hopefully maybe for the next year.”
Hodgson said that he’s turned his attention to other World Superbike squads, “but I’m just waiting for a couple of teams that are really interested in me that are trying to secure sponsors, so I’m unfortunately having to wait for them to finalize their sponsorship before they can be in a position to really do anything.”
The most likely possibility is with Carl Fogarty, an option that once seemed unlikely. At Road Atlanta, Hodgson made it clear that he didn’t find teaming with Fogarty to be a very palatable option. The other team is Klaffi Honda, which ran Brazilian Alex Barros this year, but has no funding for 2007.
Ciabatti said the Fogarty option wouldn’t include Ducatis. At the Imola round of the World Superbike Championship, Ciabatti told Fogarty and his general manager that they had a deadline for ordering the F06 machines with traction control. He said, “Listen, I need to know in a week, because then it’s too late for us to order the material. So we will be more than happy for you to race with our bikes’ and then Carl [Fogarty] said, ‘I’ll do it only if Neil is riding ride for me,’ so it was in a way the perfect solution. But it didn’t materialize, unfortunately, because of probably Carl underestimating how difficult it is to find the money needed to run a professional team nowadays.
“From the moment we decided that Neil will be not our rider for 2007, we told Roger [Burnett] and we tried any other possibilities to keep him on a Ducati as much as we could, but unfortunately it didn’t work out. I can understand that he might be disappointed, because at the moment I think he’s without a ride and this is never good for a rider.”
As for Fogarty getting Ducati F06’s at this late date, Ciabatti said, “It’s impossible.” He continued: "The only bikes with the traction control system, four belong to us and we’ll race next year with the ‘06 bikes, the same bikes we’ve been using this season. The same goes with GSE Racing; they will use next year same bikes they have used this season [in British Superbike]. And the four AMA bikes we sold to the Borciani team for Ruben Xaus.”
Two will be used in World Superbike and the other two they will use for the Italian Championship with Marco Borciani, who’s the Italian champion. Fogarty’s only hope for Ducatis would be to buy the two bikes from Borciani, which would be very surprising, because Ciabatti spoke to Borciani Monday and was told that he has every intention to use this bikes himself.
“There aren’t any other bikes with traction control existing. And so there are only 12 bikes of this kind in the world.”
Borciani tried to craft a deal with Hodgson to race alongside former teammate Xaus, with whom Hodgson has a cool relationship, but the funding didn’t exist. Xaus indirectly attracted sponsorship from Spanish broadcaster Telecinco, but, according to Ciabatti, the team is still lacking a few hundred thousand Euros to run a second rider for a full season.
“So at the moment they are planning to do selected events with Marco Borciani and the Italian championship.”
Hodgson was one of three riders - Ben Bostrom and Aaron Yates were the others - vying for the Superstock seat at Yamaha that went to Bostrom.
“I was really interested in trying to hook up with a good manufacturer,” he said. “I had seen what Eric Bostrom had done. Seen what a great job he’d done and he told me how good Yamaha was and I was interested in doing what he did. Really, take a step sort of backwards/sideways, but really looking at the bigger picture. That’s something I really hoped was going to come off. At the last minute it didn’t work out. I was very disappointed, actually. That was one of those little secret deals I was doing, that I thought, when this comes off, everyone’s going to be surprised; they’ll think that I’ve taken a Superstock ride. But I knew what I was doing and I had a master plan and I was really positive about.
“Genuinely, If it could have gone to anybody, I was pleased it went to Ben, because I knew he was in an awkward position as well, where there weren’t a lot of opportunities for him. I was pleased for him and truly hope he does well on it.”
