Suter MotoGP Prototype Racer
One year after presenting the Suter MMX Moto2 prototype to the world’s press and the Grand Prix teams for the first time, Eskil Suter, CEO of Suter Racing Technology, returned to the San Marino Grand Prix with another new development, and probably the company’s most ambitious and exciting project so far:
This time, Eskil Suter and Alessandro Giussani, Chief Operative Officer at Suter Racing Technology, unveiled a brand new MotoGP prototype racer that will be further developed with Belgian Moto2 Marc VDS Racing Team next year, and that will be on the starting grid in 2012, when a rule change will allow a new generation of 1000 cc bikes with production-based engines to run alongside the 800 cc full factory racers.
“There are two or three good engine options around, but we decided for BMW’s S 1000 RR engine, not only because it is very powerful to start with, but also because it is an in-line four-cylinder configuration with dimensions quite similar to the current Moto2 engines. There will be a lot of synergy between the two projects. Whatever we learn in the development of the MotoGP bike will also be a benefit to our MMX Moto 2 machine”, explained Eskil Suter. “But so far, BMW is not involved in our project. It is a private project that will kick off with a standard engine, and we will only introduce engine modifications step by step.”
“Our goal is to offer customers a competitive but affordable chassis package, and our first estimate are costs of something between 350.000 and 600.000 Euro for one rider with a set of two bikes per season, engines not included. This is obviously a higher price than our Moto2 offers, but developing a competitive MotoGP racer is also a much more complicated and costly task. Our calculation is also based on a maximum of four Suter bikes on the MotoGP grid and not on 13 bikes that we are currently running in the Moto2 class.”
“Our aim is to test the bike as early as end of this month. We have chosen Spanish Suter MMX rider Carmelo Morales to ride our bike because he is also very fast on the 1000 cc Formula Extreme category.”
