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.
While the line up for the 2019 MotoGP season was settled surprisingly early in the year, the opposite has been the case for WorldSBK. With just two weeks to go to the first full test of 2019, there are still a whole range of seats open, and questions going unanswered.
One of the reasons for the delay became clear at the EICMA show in Milan last week. While the manufacturers were presenting their newest bikes, including some of the key machines that will star in World Superbikes next year, a couple of manufacturers also presented their racing programs for 2019.
Perhaps the biggest story came from Honda, where HRC presented Althea and Moriwaki as their new partners in running their WorldSBK program. After a partnership of three years, and a relationship going back nearly two decades, Ten Kate are out, with the Italians and Japanese taking over.
It wasn’t just Ten Kate: title sponsor Red Bull were also out. The energy drink firm had signed up when Nicky Hayden was with the team, a big name draw for sponsors, and a rider with a long connection to Red Bull.
It was Red Bull who brought in Jake Gagne, the American who never really found his feet in the WorldSBK championship. After two years of poor results, Red Bull withdrew.
Honda is making waves in the World Superbike paddock for next season, as HRC has pulled its support from the Ten Kate team, and is instead creating a factory team inside the garage of Althea and Moriwaki, who will jointly run the Red Bull Honda WorldSBK racing effort.
Contracted to HRC, Leon Camier will remain on the Honda CBR1000RR SP2 next season, and he will be joined by Ryuichi Kiyonari. Possessing the correct passport, this news means that the 2019 season will mark nearly a decade’s worth of time since Kiyonari last started a World Superbike race.
As we understand it, Althea Racing will run the logistics and hospitality of the new Honda WorldSBK team, while Moriwaki will handle what happens in the pit box and out on track.
Where this news leaves the Ten Kate team remains to be seen, though the championship is currently without representation from Suzuki, Aprilia, and MV Agusta – the latter making its plans to leave WorldSBK racing clear, earlier this year.
If you didn’t catch the hint in Leon Camier’s interview with us (for our A&R Pro subscribers), the British rider has switched teams for the 2018 World Superbike season, signing today with the Ten Kate Honda team for next season.
The move is a bold one for Camier, who has made a name for himself in the WorldSBK paddock by putting the MV Agusta F4 well beyond the ranks that many insiders expected it to achieve.
With Ten Kate needing similar helping developing the Honda CBR1000RR SP2, Camier’s presence in the garage next season is surely a welcomed sign for Big Red, but one has to wonder if its the best idea for Camier.
Everyone at the upcoming World Superbike round at Laguna Seca will have Nicky Hayden on their minds, as the American rider’s absence from the racing paddock is still sadly felt.
Instead of seeing an empty garage though, Hayden’s side of the pitbox will be busy this weekend, as Jake Gagne will ride with the Red Bull Honda team at the American round, thus making his World Superbike Championship debut.
Taking leave of his MotoAmerica superbike duties with the Genuine Broaster Chicken Honda for the weekend, Gagne will race aboard the WorldSBK factory-spec Honda CBR1000RR SP2 race bike for Laguna Seca, giving American fans someone local to cheer for during both World Superbike races this weekend.
Momentum for a technical shake-up in WorldSBK has increased, but the manner to instigate that change is a big question. As such, the Imola paddock was full of rumor and discussion about changes to the technical regulations for 2018.
With Kawasaki and Ducati having shared all but four wins since the start of the 2015 season, there have been calls to grant other manufacturers some avenues with which to improve performance. Discussions between the manufacturers took place once again in Italy to lay down a framework for the future.
No answers were forthcoming but with Yamaha and Honda having brought all-new Superbikes to the series in the last year, and struggled to compete with the front-runners, it is clear that the winds of change may be in the air.
For 2017, Aprilia increased its involvement with the Milwaukee Aprilia bikes built and prepared in Italy. The former title-winning marque has thus far failed to live-up to preseason expectations.
Assen had been earmarked as a key round for Honda in its search for competitiveness in WorldSBK. It passed with more confirmation that the team’s struggles will continue.
Nine points were all that Nicky Hayden had to show for himself at the end of a trying weekend at the TT Circuit of Assen. The Honda rider was able to show some signs of improved competitiveness at times during the weekend, but overall the same flaws of the Honda Fireblade have been exposed once again.
Reliability and inability to bring competitive upgrades to the table cost Hayden dearly at Assen. The week before the Dutch round, the team tested a new engine specification in Portimao and the American came away disappointed with a lack of progress.
Nicky Hayden and Stefan Bradl had their first experience of the all new for 2017 Honda CBR1000RR SP2 on the opening day of the Jerez test, and it was clear that there is still plenty of work to be done by the Ten Kate squad to get the bikes ready for the start of the season.
With the Phillip Island opener only four weeks away, the Dutch team faces a race against time to be up to speed for the start of the WorldSBK campaign. Both riders made it clear that it is very early days for the project, and as a result were unwilling to offer definitive opinions – though initial impressions were positive.
The first week of 2017 has come and gone, and we are a week closer to the MotoGP bikes hitting the track again at Sepang for the first test of the year.
Though little of consequence is happening publicly in the midst of the winter break, there are the first few signs of activity.
So, after the jump is a round-up of the news from last week: most of the things that matter, all in one place.