Kawasaki out of MotoGP, Honda pull out of F1, Suzuki quit rallying, as do Subaru...

All of this his begs the question: Is MotoGP in its current format, sustainable in the current financial climate? The answer, as it stands at the moment, is no.

The Japanese economy is currently sinking faster than recently-harpooned pilot whale. Car manufacturers, including Honda and Toyota, are in desperate trouble with the CEO of Suzuki suggesting than sooner rather than later, there will be three car companies in the country instead of six.

MotoGP is hugely expensive. If you include all the support Honda gives to its customers teams, the factory spends upwards of $50m a season. Ducati spend around $20m but it is more than covered by sponsorship. They are the only manufacturer to make money out of MotoGP.

Spending $50m on racing when your company is big trouble can't happen. Kawasaki Heavy Industries is a massive, massive firm of which making motorcycles is very small. Racing motorcycles is even smaller and they have had no problems with dipping in and out of GP racing when it suits them. They'd rather pay attention to making nuclear power stations properly.

For Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha making motorcycles is very much a huge part of the business model. For Ducati, it is the only thing they do and they spend a great deal of time, effort and money marketing it.

Ducati go racing to market the product and the whole effort is run by marketeers who want to sell more motorbikes with Ducati written on them. Yamaha, Honda and Suzuki's efforts are run by engineers who want to win races by making the best/fastest motorcycle. Whether they sell more bkes or not is up to someone else in the company.

There are those who say that Honda et al will always go racing because that's what they do. No they won't. When it becomes financially impossible to spend £50m on flying round the world in order to collect trophies, someone will say stop.

It happened in 1968 and history has a horrible habit of repeating itself. However, in 1968 when Honda and Suzuki called time on their GP effort, and Yamaha did the same a year later, there wasn't an astute little Italian waiting in the wings with a much cheaper, bit still worldwide, option.

Even in these tough times, Paolo Flammini must be rubbing his hands in glee and the smart money says he has already been on the blower to Marco Melandri's management team, and probably to Ducati and Aprilia to see if they have any bikes knocking about.

Whatever happens in MotoGP, it won't be good for anyone apart from accountants, and will probably strenghten Flammini's position...