Pramac unhappy with JiR statement about Tamada wins

Pramac Racing, which runs the Alice Ducati MotoGP team, has sought to clarify that Makoto Tamada's success during the 2003 and 2004 seasons came as a Pramac rider rather than part of the JiR team.

In Friday's statement confirming an end to JiR's Honda association, Chief Executive Officer Gianluca Montiron Luca Montiron declared: "I am thinking of the 2003 season when my project brought Bridgestone into MotoGP alongside the Japanese rider Makoto Tamada. I remember with pleasure and pride a year of success in 2004, the year of the Camel Honda Team, with Tamada-san once more."

Those words prompted the following response from Pramac:

"Pramac Racing would like to clarify that those two years [2003 and 2004] of projects were not developed by the current JiR Managing Director [Montiron], but by Pramac Racing, as Mr. Montiron was then a fellow worker of the Italian company owned by Pramac group. For this reason neither JiR nor Luca Montiron should take credit for the Bridgestone, Camel Honda and Makoto Tamada projects.

"We take this occasion to wish JiR a successful and satisfying future, whatever plans they will announce at the end of this season, but we ask them not appropriate a story that is not theirs."

After acting as team manager for Tamada at Pramac, Montiron formed JiR around the Japanese in 2005, whom he continued to field until the end of 2006, albeit with no race wins.

Shinya Nakano then rode for the team in 2007, but 2008 - when JiR joined forces with Team Scot - has been its most successful, with rookie Andrea Dovizioso currently fifth in the world championship standings.

Meanwhile, Pramac Racing - which leased a grid slot to run Tamada from Luis d'Antin in 2003, then from Sito Pons in 2004 - switched its resources directly to the d'Antin team from 2005, a team it now owns and runs.