The MotoGP silly season seems to start earlier and earlier nowadays, but April seems to be taking things a little far. Over at Autosport.com, they are reporting that Alstare Suzuki boss Francis Batta may switch his team from World Superbikes to MotoGP for the 2008 season, taking rider Max Biaggi with him.

The context of this is unsurprising, as the battle surrounding capacity changes hots up inside World Superbikes. Ducati are pushing for the capacity limit for twin cylinder bikes to be upped to 1200cc, so that they could run the new 1098. To compensate for this, the allowed engine modifications would be made the same for both twins and four cylinder machines, as under the current regulations, teams are allowed to modify twins much more heavily. But, whenever rule changes look imminent in any racing class, those with the most to lose immediately start crying foul, and the teams running four cylinder bikes are complaining bitterly about the proposed changes.

And so the next step in this war of words sees Francis Batta threatening to leave. His threat is fairly credible, as his contracts with Suzuki and with his sponsor, Corona, both expire at the end of this year, leaving Batta free to move to another series should he so wish, taking his star rider with him. But two serious problems stand in the Belgian team manager's way:

1. Firstly, Batta would need to raise significantly larger sums than he has needed in World Superbikes. A competitive superbike is generally thought to cost in the region of $100,000. But the cost of leasing a competitive MotoGP bike is said to be over $3 million, a huge step up in expenditure;
2. Then there's the small matter of finding someone to supply you bikes. It's an open secret that Honda has blacklisted Biaggi from ever riding one of their machines again, after the Roman Emperor's bitter split with Honda during his final year in MotoGP. Biaggi is also no favorite of Yamaha, after making some rather sharp remarks about the Yamaha when he left the team back in 2003. That severely limits Biaggi's options in the premier class.

Most likely, Batta's threat is just a way of applying pressure to the FIM and FGSport, who run World Superbikes, not to allow the rule changes. So far, of course, no one has pointed out to Batta that his simplest course of action if the rule changes go ahead would be to race the 1098 himself.

Although it's a little early for the silly season to start, it's by no means the earliest silly season rumor in MotoGP so far. James Toseland is already rumored to be going to MotoGP next year, and rumors that Jorge Lorenzo will partner Valentino Rossi at Yamaha in 2008 surfaced as early as September last year. So April is not too bad, if you look at it that way.