Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128145
Ten Kate & BKM Honda CBR600 World Supersport By ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS BY KEL EDGE (/j)Jl ow bizarre! Out of the fOUT W Japanese manufacturers (and Ducati), Honda is the only one never to have won the World Supersport Championship. That's in spite of inventing tJ1e 600cc Sportbike class a decade and a half ago with the first CBR600, and eonsistently cleaning up ever since both in the showroom and in national-level competition in the USA, Britain, Australia and anywhere else that 600cc Supersport means something. However, better late than never: 2001 was the year that Honda finally got serious about World Supersport, even to the extent of creating a new track-targeted Sport derivative of the new fuel-injected version of the CBR600 to act as a homologationspecial platform for Supersport success, without compromising the all'rounder characteristics of the base-level bike that has topped the 600cc showroom sales charts for so long. To go along with that, Honda selected two teams to receive special support in the 2001 World Supersport series· the Dutch Ten Kate squad and Belgian-based BKM, providing full factory backup to what are nevertheless still privateer teams who prepare and tune their own bikes. Time to rock 'n' roll. The way the l1-race series kicked off at Valencia last March seemed to confirm Honda was on to a winner, with Pere Riba taking victory on home ground aboard his Pirelli-shod 40 MARCH 13,2002' CUD I Ten Kate bike in what was the fuelinjected CBR600's debut race. Next time out in the Phillip Island swimming pool, it was local ace Kevin Curtain's tum to do the business in a Down Under deluge on his Michelintired BKM machine - a victory that the Aussie rain-master repeated in the next wet race at Lausitzring, in June. But in between, the Yamaha bandwagon had gotten rolling, with R6 riders Paolo Casoli and Jorge Teuchert elbowing each other aside in the points table as well as on the racetrack - shadowed all the time by eventual champion Andrew Pitt's ever"present Kawasaki. Suzuki was still developing their all-new bike, Ducati was out of it, Kawasaki couldn't win races - so the race to the checkered flag turned out to be a Honda/Yamaha duopoly, and when Riba's teammate Fabien Foret found the way to the winner's circle The two Ten Kate Honda CBR600s of Pere Alba and Fabian Foret flank the BKM Honda that was rlclclen last year ~ Kevin Curtain. himself at Oschersleben in September, with Riba second, it marked the Dutch-entered Hondas as the coming force of the World Supersport field - a fact confirmed in the final race at Imola, when Foret won again. Th is left Honda with five race wins over the 2001 World Championship