SMR boss Shaun Muir is edging closer to confirming which manufacturer he will run with in WorldSBK 2019 and should be in a position to announce his plans in September.
Muir, who currently runs Eugene Laverty and Lorenzo Savadori under the Milwaukee Aprilia banner, is in talks with the Noale factory, Ducati and has also made contact with BMW but says he needs to nail down the financials before he can make any announcements.
“We got options on the table. The biggest challenge is finalising the sponsors and clearly they need to know which manufacturer they are signing up for,” Muir told bikesportnews.com at the Portimao WorldSBK test.
“I think now the top two or three teams have finalised or are close to finalising their riders, it has left a queue, which is nice, but we can’t decide on that until we know which manufacturer.
“We should have in the next days confirmation of our sponsors and after that I have meetings at Silverstone with Aprilia and Ducati to talk about where we are with their packages. I am hopeful there will be something useful to come out of those. There is a possibility we might go with neither.
“There is an outside chance that BMW might do something in the future and I would like to know what that is before we make a decision. Once the sponsors are on the table, I can start to go forward.
Whether Laverty and Savadori will remain in the team is still up in the air as there are a few ‘class one riders’ as Muir puts it, with nothing confirmed, including former champion Tom Sykes.”
“The riders I have been speaking to are the ones I currently run at the moment, obviously Tom Sykes is available, but you don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to work out there aren’t many factoryesque seats available at the moment.
“I think there is a fair list of riders. I think the Aruba Ducati riders will be announced soon, so there are three or four class one riders available.”