Paul Bird Motorsport or PBM that races a single ART machine in the CRT category of MotoGP with rider James Ellison has denied that it is splitting with the rider. The manager of the team Paul Bird (who managed the official Kawasaki World Superbike effort before quitting WSBK at the end of last year after a split with Kawasaki and concentrating on BSB still with Kawasaki machinery and MotoGP with ART or Aprilia Racing Technologies) himself has issued a denial of split with Ellison. The mysterious press release says that Shane (Shaky) Byrne is only being used for additional testing and not as replacement for Ellison. The additional testing has been necessitated apparently by the chatter issue on the ART machine which Ellison is finding to be a problem. Bird has insisted that Byrne and Stuart Easton will continue as test riders for PBM. Now that is a strange piece of news, something that nobody even knew existed.