Batta presents first WSBK title to Suzuki.

Team Alstare Suzuki Corona Extra team manager Francis Batta visited Suzuki Motor Corporation in Japan this week and presented the factory with the 2005 World Superbike Championship Manufacturers' Cup - Suzuki's first in the 18-year history of the series.

"First place by Troy Corser and a top-five by Yukio Kagayama led us to the top of the podium in the Manufacturers' Championship. We wouldn't have achieved these results without the assistance of Suzuki distributors in Europe," said Batta, who met with senior Suzuki marketing director Shinzo Nakanishi, managing director Sadayuki Inobe and director Yoshihiko Kakei.

"Unlike a prototype MotoGP race machine, Superbikes depend largely on stock parts and we appreciate that Suzuki has developed a brilliant motorcycle in the GSX-R1000," Batta added.

"We believe that good results in the Superbike class will raise the morale of distributors and dealers and large promotion for sales of market models. I believe we owe much of the current worldwide popularity of GSX-Rs to the great performance of Team Alstare," praised Inobe.

"I consider that the World Superbike has been playing a significant role in activating motor sports and sales promotion of market models," underlined Kakei. "In this top category of the production bike we look forward to further brilliant accomplishments of Alstare with our GSX-Rs and we are sure that they can do it."

As well as winning their first WSBK Manufacturers' title in 2005, Corser's Riders' Championship triumph was also the first ever by a Suzuki rider.

Alstare has been running Suzuki machinery since 1999 - in 1998 and 1999 they won the World Supersport Riders' title, with Fabrizio Pirovano and Stephane Chambon, and were World Supersport Manufacturers' Champions in 1998 and 2002.