Ezpeleta plans MotoGP and SBK
Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta has said he intends to keep MotoGP and SBK two entirely separate series, but wants strict rules and regulations for both series.
Speaking at the Ducati Wrooom event the Dorna CEO said, “This is to confirm that we will maintain the two separate championships. One will be for motorcycles derived from production bikes [World Superbikes] and the other one will be prototypes [MotoGP].”
Ezpeleta also confirmed that, in his eyes, World Superbikes were intended to, make everybody happy.
“The effort is to make everyone happy, to control the costs and give similar equipment for all the riders from each manufacturer.”
Ezpeleta’s aims for SBK would be to cut the cost of the bikes, with every manufacturer present in the series obliged to supply, if requested, six bikes at the cost of 250,000€ each per season (excluding spare parts for crash re-builds) with no limits on ECU’s, number of The World Superbike Commission will also see the return of the MSMA.
He was also asked in response to rumors that the Superstock 1000 and 600 classes may be dropped, but Ezpeleta explained that he was concerned if the performance of the Superstock bikes get too close to that of the Superbike machines.
In MotoGP, the rules for 2014 to 2016 have already be confirmed and Ezpeleta revealed they are already working on 2017. Ezpeleta also confirmed that CRT teams can opt to using their production based equipment.
But in 2014, they will have the option of switching to Honda’s low cost racer based on the RC213V, that will cost 1 million euros per season, plans of which were revealed back in June. Although Honda has to supply up to five machines.
The other alternative is to use Yamaha’s M1 engines, which have been recently priced at 800,000 euros per season, with the Iwata manufacturer supplying four, whilst teams continue to use their own chassis’ and the Magneti Marelli ECU units supplied by Dorna.
The CRT bikes will still have a 24 liters fuel allowance, four more than the prototypes which should help cut the performance gap.
Another change will be that any new manufacturer who wants to enter MotoGP will have to merge with an existing team already in the series.
The news of a new team will only increase speculation that in 2014 the Suzuki team will be joining the Aspar team at the expense of the ART machines currently being run by Aspar.