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Aaron Yates

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The World Superbike racing season is rapidly approaching with its season-opener at Phillip Island on February 23rd, and with a bevy of OEMs set to enter World Superbike, the FIM has made house calls to make sure that the OEMs have met their first production volume requirements for homologation.

With MV Agusta’s volumes of the F4 not at issue, the crux of the FIM’s work centered around Erik Buell Racing and Bimota. Confirming that Erik Buell Racing has met its 125 unit obligation, before the first WSBK race, the FIM however could not say the same about Bimota.

Bimota’s inability to produce the requisite 125 units of the Bimota BB3 is perhaps unsurprising, as the boutique Italian brand has only recently been acquired, and the new superbike model was just unveiled at the 2013 EICMA show. Despite the World Superbike’s announcement that the FIM would bend the rules regarding homologation, it would be seem that is not the case.

In October when Erik Buell Racing announced that it would be making the move into the World Superbike Championship, the American sport bike company wasn’t saying much about its racing program.

Geoff May soon intoned his participation with the team, confirming his presence in WSBK to Greg White on Greg’s Garage, though May’s teammate was unknown at the time.

That mystery seems to be over, as World Superbike media front-man Michael Hill has released a list of confirmed entries for the 2014 World Superbike season, with Yate’s and May’s names listed for the Erik Buell Racing entry.

For the Indianapolis GP, race fans will delighted to see two American wild card entries on the grid, as both Attack Performance and GP Tech will likely be racing CRT bikes come Sunday afternoon. We have already gotten a chance to see Attack’s bike, as Steve Rapp piloted it around Laguna Seca for MotoGP’s first stop on American soil this season. Unfortunately for Rapp & Attack, they failed to qualify for the Red Bull US GP at Laguna Seca, missing the cut-off by just under seven-tenths of a second.

Meanwhile GP Tech, a veteran to wild cards at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, has stepped up to the big show this year, with Aaron Yates on board the team’s Suzuki-powered CRT bike. Getting a chance to try the road course at Indy during the AMA tire test, GP Tech put some cameras on its roided-out GSX-R, and today brings us a lap of IMS from the perspective of a CRT. With both Attack and GP Tech expected to qualify later today, Sunday’s race fans should have a couple more familiar names to follow during the race. Check the lap out after the jump.