Sylvain Guintoli has joined Pata Honda for 2015, hot off the heels of a rather good weekend in Qatar.
The Frenchman has ridden for the title sponsor before, giving them their first ever wins in WSB on a Ducati 1198 a couple of years back. Guintoli’s WSB career has always been more a case of nearly, right up until 2014, that is. Few had him down as a title contender just three rounds ago when he trailed Tom Sykes by 44-points, but he went and proved everyone wrong.
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Could his move to Honda be well timed, though? And could Jonny Rea’s mooted move to join Sykes at Kawasaki be right at the wrong time? We will know within a day or two whether or not Honda will release their own V4 sportsbike, which could be the best ride on the grid especially if Aprilia do the unthinkable and completely pull out of WSB. We hope they won’t, they’ll likely not get much success in MotoGP for quite a while. We expect a private team to run the factory WSB bikes at the moment, with factory support, but this could change considering how expensive MotoGP is to compete in, at least ten times a factory WSB budget. We will see…
But for Guintoli, taking the number one plate to Honda is a steal for the Japanese firm too. If they can give him a WSB spec’ RCV, maybe he’ll have an even better chance of retaining his first ever world title.
As for the rest of the WSB grid, the next few weeks will make for interesting watching.
