On Track Off Road No. 194

FEATURE
Have you been able to
measure the marketing
impacts? Triumph seem to be
much more prominently
present than Honda ever were
in Moto2…
Yeah. Quite honestly that’s one
of the reasons that Dorna were
excited about us coming into
the championship, because we
do want to be proactive with it.
Obviously we want to promote
the Triumph brand, but we also
want to promote Moto2 and
get the excitement building
around Moto2. So, every single
round we do social media
pieces around what’s going on.
We see the social media reach
that we get from that, and it’s
impressive. That’s a big win
compared to just putting out
a standard piece about other
stuff that’s going on.
Can you take something like
EICMA or Motorcycle Live as
a gauge? Before people would
flock to look at something like
the latest Scrambler. Is there
a sense that more people are
interested in Moto2? Is there
more enthusiasm around the
sports side of the portfolio?
Yeah. I was at EICMA. It was
quite impressive to see the
number of people coming over
and sitting on the street triple.
We also had the Daytona
Limited Edition there. There
was quite a crowd around that
on the public days. So you
get a sense of that. Where we
really start to get a sense of
it, I think, is when the selling
season starts in the spring.
Obviously, we’ve just launched
an update for the Street Triple
that essentially uses the same
engine that we’ve been using
in Moto2. It will be interesting
to see what deposits and what
interests we start getting in
the street triple update off the
back of Moto2.
From a British perspective
and perhaps at a time when
the UK is probably lacking
some top-class riders coming
through do you feel that Triumph
is helping a little bit in
terms of British exposure? Do
you find any kind of pick up
from the mainstream media?
I think there’s that side to it in
terms of getting exposure in
the UK, but the other side is
that when we’ve had discussions
with Dorna, we’ve always
been quite clear that - as far as
we’re concerned - we want to
see some Brits in the championship.
As a British brand it’s
quite important for us to have
Brits. Obviously we sell globally
[and] our ideal scenario
would be a Frenchman wins in
France, a Brit wins in the UK,
a Spaniard wins in Spain! But
certainly we’ve made it quite
clear that it is important for us
to have some Brits in there.
Have you ever considered having
a Triumph factory team in
Moto2? Has that discussion
happened?
To be fair, Dorna were quite
clear from the start that they
saw the engine supply as being
separate from the chassis
manufacturers. I guess as
much as anything that’s to
make sure that there’s a level
playing field. I’m sure if we
came into the championship
from day one and said, “we’re
going to supply the engine and
the frame,” there would be
a lot of teams going, “Whoa,
hang on a minute. That seems
a little bit unfair.” So that’s not
really something we’ve considered
doing.
Is this also a way to dip your
toes in the water of MotoGP
maybe in four, five, six years’
time? Or do you think the cost
of that would not outweigh the
benefits?
Cost is obviously massively
different in developing a MotoGP
bike and going MotoGP
racing but I think what Moto2
has done has opened-up the
eyes of people within the company
in terms of what racing
can do in getting your brand
out there and creating exposure.
So we’re not going to rule
anything out. We review these
things on a regular basis. We
report back to the board every
month what’s happened in
Moto2, what kind of reach that
we’ve achieved out of it and
all those kind of things. Inevitably
there will be discussions
around ‘how do we do more
of this kind of stuff?’ Whether
that leads to racing in other
championships, I think we’ll
have to wait and see.