Ten Kate Racing will be making a return to the WorldSBK paddock. At either Imola or Jerez, the Dutch squad will be racing a Yamaha YZF-R1 with Loris Baz.
With still some testing and development left to do, racing at Imola in early May is a tough challenge, but Ten Kate will definitely be racing at the Jerez round of WorldSBK to be held from June 7th – 9th.
Here is a chance to own a very special motorcycle. It is one thing when a World Superbike racing machine comes up for sale, because you know that it will be dripping with all the right parts, and have a pedigree to match.
But, it is an entirely different thing when the bike was raced by a rider as loved as Nicky Hayden still is by his legion of fans.
Put those two things together, and you have today’s opportunity, which is Nicky Hayden’s 2017 Ten-Kate spec Honda CBR1000RR SP2 WorldSBK race bike. The ultimate collectors bike, you will need €95.000 in your bank account to make it your own.
For sale from Ten Kate itself, the machine has matching chassis and engine numbers, matching ECU and electronics numbers, and is a matching chassis build-up. The bike is set to the exact specification that Nicky Haden used on the track.
Ten Kate Racing BV, the private limited company housing the Ten Kate Racing team’s racing activities, has been declared bankrupt by a Dutch court.
The Ten Kate team had been forced to file for bankruptcy after last-minute attempts to put together a WorldSBK effort for 2019 had failed.
Ten Kate placed the blame for the bankruptcy squarely on Honda.
Stefan Bradl is to miss the rest of the 2017 WorldSBK season. The Red Bull Honda rider’s wrist injury, sustained in a crash at Portimao, is more serious than initially thought, and the recovery period required means he will not be fit for either the Jerez or Qatar rounds of WorldSBK.
The decision was taken after surgery on Bradl’s right wrist. Pins were inserted and a torn scaphulonate ligament reattached, damage sustained in the crash.
The surgeons who performed the operation have ordered Bradl to keep his wrist immobilized to allow the damage to heal. This effectively makes it impossible for him to ride for the rest of the season.
While it has hardly been surprising to see Ducati and Kawasaki maintain their position as the dominant forces at play in WorldSBK, the battle for best-of-the-rest has been an interesting subplot for 2017.
Over the course of the opening three rounds of the campaign, the form of Honda and Yamaha has been marked by their stark contrast in fortunes.
Last year, Honda had been a podium and front-row regular as the season moved into the European swing, and Yamaha looked to be clutching at straws and looking for any positives they could find on their return to the series.
This year has seen their roles have reversed, with Yamaha consistently the best-of-the-rest and in position to fight for a rostrum finish. Honda on the other hand have had a disastrous start to the campaign with an all-new Fireblade.
They say you should never underestimate the fight in a dirt-tracker, but after Portimao the dirt-tracker isn’t underestimating the fight ahead of him. After four days on the new Honda Fireblade, Nicky Hayden cast a downbeat figure at times, but the American is digging deep.
Armed with his renowned work ethic, the Ten Kate rider will be leaving no stone unturned in finding a solution, but after a troubled opening test, it went from bad to worse for the Dutch team.
“The first day was not a good day for us,” admitted Hayden. “I really don’t know how to sugar coat it any better. We’re really struggling with edge grip, the bike pumping, and not being stable on the exit of the corners. We never found a direction to go in and nothing really helped the problem.”
The first race of the 2016 World Superbike season is in the bag, and the second round of racing is coming to us from Thailand later this week. This gives the Paddock Pass Podcast crew plenty to talk about from the World Superbike paddock.
Episode 19 has the extra treat of an interview with Ronald Ten Kate, the man behind Ten Kate Racing, which is running Honda’s factory WSBK effort.
He and David talk about the team’s progress in the off-season, how things are shaping up in the garage with Nicky Hayden and Michael van der Mark, and what is ahead on the road.
If you are a World Superbike fan, you won’t want to miss this excellent show from the Paddock Pass Podcast boys. David event gets the intro right…almost.
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