Gas Gas racing alumni - can we get them back?

[barkeater]

What would it take (besides the obvious - deep pockets or stalking) to get old Gas Gas alumni back on the bikes?
Riders we lost because of lack of support, like:

Russell Bobbitt
Nick Fahringer
Richard Lafferty
Cody Mastin
Dylan Debel
Matt Stavish
John Barber

You get my drift.

[gasgasman]

2008 race season is a write off (too late).
I guess they can make a push for the '09 race season.
Gas Gas will have to sell a lot of bikes to cover a huge rider support program.

Gas Gas' "problem" is that they don't update the bikes enough yearly to make riders want them.
Look at the Gas Gas motor, it's been around for 14 years. True it's bullet proof etc. But they are not attracting younger riders.

Gas Gas needs some type of gimmic. KTM's electric start 2 strokes are selling like hot cakes.

KTM riders are buying new bikes every couple years, because their bikes are revamped every 2 to 3 years. That means sales go up.

Just my $0.02

[Bearman]

True, but KTM has to revamp their bikes every couple of years in hope of getting it right for once .

But you're exactly right, there aren't any gimics that help GasGas sell ther bikes, there isnt as much publicity in magazines to help sell bikes as other manufacturers have (although ive noticed an increase in ADB magazine in Australia), and we havent got someone like David Knight riding for us. But that takes us back to the start again.

We want some of those good old riders back, but we need to make sales, but we need popularity to sell bikes which you can get from having big name pro riders.

[TooFastTim]

How about getting Tadeusz Bluziak back? How Gasser missed that one I'll never know.

[ramcclure200]

or someone like Team USA's Kurt Caselli

Yes it would help Gas Gas greatly to get more publicity and there are several ways to accomplish it:
1- Polish up the MC250 and get into the supercross series
(how I long to hear a 2-stroke on the track)
2- Get a top level rider entered into the GNCC series
3- Same goes for National Enduro Series
4- Hire Red Bulls marketing company (obviously they know how to sell)
5-Etc.......

Remember most of all it can be done

[gasgasman]

Originally Posted by ramcclure200

or someone like Team USA's Kurt Caselli

Yes it would help Gas Gas greatly to get more publicity and there are several ways to accomplish it:
1- Polish up the MC250 and get into the supercross series
(how I long to hear a 2-stroke on the track)
2- Get a top level rider entered into the GNCC series
3- Same goes for National Enduro Series
4- Hire Red Bulls marketing company (obviously they know how to sell)
5-Etc.......

Remember most of all it can be done

In a nut shell, you're right.
Supercross would take too much money. It would cost $5 million to run a team for a year.

[roostafish]

Remember Paul Edmonson? We can thank him for developing what we have today.

I have an idea, let's all make our own team. We'll show up for national enduros in force. 20 of us, we can all pit together.

[fury1]

we have four guys racing Gassers out of the box truck this year,now to figure out a name for our team!

[roostafish]

Why not........ Team Gas Gas? So it's not a factory team, they don't have one.

[TooFastTim]

Personally I couldn't give a flying f$ck about MX or SX. I don't like the people (arrogant little sh%theads with jack for brains) and I'm not sure we should be associating with those people. It's also, as stated previously, hugely expensive. Even that orange bike company is having problems trying to break into SX, what chance a small Spanish company?

IMO we should worry about off-road (enduros & hare scramble/GNCC & trials).