Ecstar Suzuki team boss Davide Brivio believes a lacklustre performance in 2017 has given the squad positive direction for MotoGP 2018, saying the season was an 'investment for the future'.
Both Alex Rins and Andrea Iannone struggled with the GSX-RR but reached a turning point during a test at Aragon where progress was finally made. Iannone stated that steps in 2018 should be small after leaps tried this year were too much of a stretch.
"The riders have experience of the bike and the bike should improve. Andrea is a rider capable of scoring podiums and getting great results, and I think he can do if we can fix all the problems," said Brivio
"Alex Rins, we try to grow a potential rider for the future, which I believe he is. I’m happy about the choice, we just now have to make everything happen.
"I would say we take this difficult season as an investment for the future. It’s been interesting because we learnt a lot, we went through very difficult moments.
"We changed both riders, and this probably affected some of our decisions during the winter, technical choices. But at the same time we spent most of this season to recover from this problem. Also we learnt, we were forced to explore various areas where we could improve the bike.
"Looking at next year we will try to put everything together, try to improve the areas where we were weak this year. Hopefully we should have a better package for next season."
