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RideFast Magazine March 2020

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PADDOCK NEWS<br />

Brought to you by<br />

TWO-<br />

STROKES<br />

TO MAKE<br />

MOTOGP<br />

RETURN BY<br />

2026?<br />

KAWASAKI AND REA LOOKING<br />

FOR MOTOGP WILDCARD?<br />

The news comes after Ezpeleta confirmed in<br />

an interview with GPOne in which he confirmed<br />

the question was raised and quickly quashed.<br />

He said, “Kawasaki asked me for the possibility<br />

of doing wildcard with their Superbike. I replied<br />

no, because wildcards are reserved for those<br />

who participate in MotoGP.”<br />

In the interview, the Dorna CEO went on to<br />

explain how he felt WSBK fitted into the grand<br />

scheme of the things by saying, “I went to the<br />

SBK paddock and said clearly that they were<br />

second division”.<br />

Kawasaki exited MotoGP ahead of the 2009<br />

season citing pressures prompted by the<br />

global financial crisis but in lieu siphoned<br />

resources towards its WorldSBK effort which<br />

at the time was struggling compared with its<br />

factory-backed rivals. It proved a shrewd move<br />

with Tom Sykes winning its first title in 20<br />

years in 2013 before Jonathan Rea reeled off<br />

five consecutive titles between 2015 and 2019.<br />

Despite this success, Kawasaki has<br />

repeatedly resisted the temptation to return<br />

to MotoGP, describing it as ten times more<br />

expensive than its WorldSBK effort with no<br />

guarantees of success.<br />

However, this revelation from Ezpeleta<br />

suggests Kawasaki has been considering the<br />

prospect of taking an adapted version of its<br />

ZX-10RR all the way to MotoGP, though its<br />

unclear how it would attempt to do this not<br />

least because MotoGP uses Michelin tyres<br />

compared with WorldSBK’s Pirelli rubber.<br />

Kawasaki did have a minor presence in<br />

MotoGP during the CRT era when its engines<br />

were used by the Avintia team, while at the<br />

time rival ART bikes were ultimately prototype<br />

adaptations of the Aprilia RSV4.<br />

Ezpeleta doesn’t say which event Kawasaki<br />

wanted to wildcard in though a performance<br />

at Motegi would be plausible given there is still<br />

no Japanese event on the WorldSBK calendar.<br />

Of the 13 events on the WorldSBK calendar,<br />

MotoGP visited seven of them last season.<br />

As a reference, Rea’s Superpole lap during the<br />

Jerez round was a 1m 38.247, which would have<br />

placed him 19th on the 24-strong grid. Fabio<br />

Quartararo’s pole winning lap was a 1m 36.880s<br />

Two-stroke engines or motors<br />

running on hydrogen could be back in<br />

MotoGP by the middle of this decade<br />

if targets to make motorsport more<br />

carbon neutral are to be achieved.<br />

Stinkwheels, as the Americans<br />

lovingly referred to them, were<br />

canned in MotoGP at the end of the<br />

2001 season as the emissions were<br />

far too high and four-strokes were<br />

brought in - some say at the behest<br />

of Honda - to made reductions.<br />

But with new direct injection,<br />

pressure charging and other<br />

technologies, two-strokes are now<br />

more efficient than four-strokes. And<br />

hydrogen engines only emit water<br />

at the end of a combustion cycle but<br />

that tech is still very expensive.<br />

F1 chief technical boff Pat Symonds is<br />

keen on using a two-stroke formula<br />

in its new specification of engine unit<br />

in 2025 and MotoGP might follow<br />

the same ideas in order to also share<br />

development costs.<br />

“I’m very keen on it being a twostroke.<br />

Much more efficient, great<br />

sound from the exhaust and a lot<br />

of the problems with the old twostrokes<br />

are just not relevant any<br />

more,” he said.<br />

“Direct injection, pressure charging,<br />

and new ignition systems have all<br />

allowed new forms of two-stroke<br />

engines to be very efficient and very<br />

emission-friendly. I think there’s a<br />

good future for them.”<br />

22 RIDEFAST MAGAZINE MARCH <strong>2020</strong>

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