When it was announced by Ducati last season they would be withdrawing their factory team from the World Superbike Championship there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was the end of the world as we knew it and WSB was over.

Well, erm, it wasn't and look what is now walking away with the World Superbike Championship? Yes, a Ducati. OK, it has a lot of factory bits and Ernesto Marelli does a really bad job of not looking like he works there every race weekend but the Althea team isn't a factory squad.

Ducati's withdrawal was purely for economic reasons and it would seem that Yamaha, who officially took their ball home this afternoon, have done it for the same reasons. But it might not be all bad.

For instance, a couple of senior staff within the team are pretty sure Eugene Laverty at least signed a letter of intent yesterday at Silverstone and that Marco Melandri did the same to a year contract. It may be the team is no longer a factory team, it just has world class riders, factory bikes and factory people, a la Althea. One technician is off to Italy this week to find out what the form is.

It may also be that Yamaha make some of the trick R1s (for they are MotoGP bikes without the M1 engine) available to some other teams. Maybe Shaun Muir will be given a little incentive to stop racing in Britain and take his team abroad. There could be six fast Yamahas on the grid next year instead of two…. Surely that's better?

What is also worth considering is the new Ducati Superquattrostagione or whatever it is called. As 2011 world champions, Althea will get a couple of them but Ducati will also wanna shift units, so we could see a brace of satellite teams also being furnished with the same equipment, Smrz's Liberty lot being one.