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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>