Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 7 FEBRUARY 19, 2014 P77 to start thinking about us, learn- ing about us, getting interested in us – and going World Superbike racing with our partner EBR is a good way of doing that. Hero thinks that road racing is going to grow in a big way in India in the next 10 years – In- dians are avid supporters of all kinds of sports, whether it be cricket, golf, lacrosse, hockey, they're very engaged, and Hero is a huge supporter of sports in India - actually Pawan is an im- mensely talented pro-level golfer. So for them, it's not just the tech- nology, they're celebrating being there, and taking part in the sport of Superbike racing at the high- est level. For us at EBR, it's about taking our technology to the next level, although we know it'll be hard. We're not going to compete in the EVO class, which is pretty much minor league in this transi- tion year, but we've gone straight to the premier class. We know we'll get beaten, but we're going to spend 2014 learning – we'll have no data for the tracks, and our riders will have to learn them, too. But this'll put us in good shape for 2015. The team will be made up of Geoff May and Aaron Yates, but who is running it for you? We have a blended team based in Italy, with American members. It's headquartered in Bergamo, it's owned by a guy named Clau- dio Quintarelli, and the manager who'll be running the operation day-to-day is Giulio Bardi. He was with the WSBK organization for many years, serving on the Superbike Commission as repre- sentative of the teams and riders, and before that he was the race engineer for Fred Merkel when he won the first two World Super- bike championships for Honda 25 years ago. So he's used to working with American riders, and quite successfully. He want- ed to get back into racing, and the World Sueprbike promoters are pretty excited about an all- American brand with American riders and Indian backing coming into the championship. Have you done any testing yet with the team, and will the bikes be any different than the ones you ran in AMA last sea- son? It will essentially be the same bike to start with, but of course we'll be developing it on a con- tinuous basis throughout the year. We'll definitely test with the other teams at Philip Island on February 17-18 before the race, but that's less than a week later, so we hope to test in Spain in late January to set us in the right direction. You say your expectations for 2014 are minimal, and that you're just there to learn. But in 2015 will you have an EVO Superbike for the new rules? Well, we don't yet fully know what those rules will be, exactly. But we only want to be running in the main WSBK class, what- ever it is, not in any subsidiary category. Let me underline that this is a long-term project, and that we're not just coming in for a year or so. So whatever the new Superbike rules will be, EBR will develop a motorcycle to run un- der them. Hero will obviously be heavily branded on the sides of the bikes, which will help its de- velopment in export markets, but it'll also help present them to the Indian home customer, who now has an Indian manufacturer in this major global series. It'll be fun for them – especially if and when we beat Honda. Since you'll have to manu- facture at least 1000 examples before the end of 2014, your EBR World Superbike racer will be based on the 1190RX for homologation purposes. When will that start produc- tion? Full production will start in Jan- uary. We originally thought that it was going to be in December, but we had a few parts that are late coming in from suppliers. We are setting up to manufacture in significant volume straight away. We already have a big dealer net- work, and many of those guys have deposits, so they all want bikes at the same time, so if I dribble them out of the door I'll have dealers mad at me. I need to be able to ramp up fast. We'll build several thousand bikes for 2014, not hundreds. Back in the days of Buell, we built 15,000 units a year here in a single shift, in the same factory we have now, but we could actually do more than that now. With the new facili- ties that we have now, we can do 20,000-plus annually - but that's

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