TOOELE VALLEY, UTAH (August 10, 2007) KTM, long a fixture in off-road and Supermoto racing, is dipping a preliminary toe into the deep waters of Superbike racing this weekend at Miller Motorsports Park in the fifth round of the Honda Presents the Plaza Cycle Masters of the Mountains series.
The Austrian company, founded in 1953, introduced its first sportbike for the street, the Super Duke 990, earlier this year. It utilizes a 999cc, 75-degree V-Twin engine designed by KTM and based on the 60cc-smaller unit of the 950 Adventure enduro bike, the factory’s first twin.
The factory’s Wisconsin-based American racing arm, HMC Racing, has spent the week at the track preparing for this weekend’s event with two of its Supermoto riders, Troy Herfoss and Johnny Lewis. The two rode the bike in a recent track-day event at Road America and posted good times, and this weekend’s Masters of the Mountains event will be the first road race for the bike and both riders.
According to Mitch Hansen, the owner of HMC Racing, this weekend’s race is the first step on the long road that will eventually lead them to Superbike racing.
“KTM has been an off-road company for a long time,” he said, “and then they kind of bridged the gap with Supermoto and did a little bit of pavement racing that way in the last few years, both in Europe and in the United States. Now they’re becoming a successful road-bike company, and their goal is continue down that path, develop that market and eventually get into Superbike racing.”
As for timelines, Hansen says not to expect a KTM team in Superbike racing for a couple of years.
“I would think the earliest would be in 2010,” he said. “There may be some form of Superbike testing or whatnot next year, but that’s just a guess.”
After this weekend at Miller Motorsports Park, the development program for the Super Duke is dependent upon HMC’s Supermoto schedule.
“We’re going to look at our Supermoto schedule and whenever we can we might do a bit of CCS racing in the Midwest,” Hansen said. “We have a lot of racetracks there like Road America, Gingerman and Blackhawk Farms, so we have some places that we can go and race to develop the Super Duke.”
The next step in the process will be the development of the RC8, which will be the bike that will go Superbike racing. According to Hansen, it will be a full-fairing bike with a V-Twin motor approaching 1200cc, and will target the same market currently occupied by the Ducati 1098.
“Hopefully, in another six to eight months we’ll have the RC8,” Hansen said, “and eventually we’ll get to ride that in Superstock form.”
Hansen said that Miller Motorsports Park is an ideal venue for the Super Duke 990’s competitive debut.
“It’s a beautiful place,” he said. “Where Road America is more of a point-and-shoot circuit, here you have a lot more flowing turns. We’re on the East Track, and the riders really like it. It’s good practice for them, and it’s good to get the cornering speeds up where they need to be. It’s a great place to shake these things out.”
Both Lewis and Herfoss are not only having to come to grips with the road course at Miller Motorsports Park, but also sharpening their road racing chops while trying to develop a brand new bike.
For Herfoss, who hails from Australia and counts himself as a lifelong Mat Mladin fan, road racing has always been the goal. Now that the goal is in sight, he is approaching his first road racing weekend with mixed emotions.
“It’s scary,” he said, “but it’s fun. It’s scary because it’s my first time and the speeds are so high. This track is just so fast, but the bike flows through it really good. I’m still learning road racing, and I’m having a lot of fun doing it.”
Herfoss has set some realistic goals for this first outing, however.
“I’m not looking to win anything this weekend,” he said. “I just want to do well, stay on the bike and learn as much as possible.”
His teammate is just as new at road racing, but confident that the bike will do well.
“The bike is really race-ready,” Lewis said. “The first time we rode it, it had the stock handlebars flipped around and we went out and rode around Road America. Our times were good enough to qualify in the top 10 in the MOTO-ST race, with a bone-stock bike on stock tires. Now we’ve got some new Dunlop DOT tires and some Vortex clip-ons and stuff, and the bike should be really good this weekend.”
The Honda Presents the Plaza Cycle Masters of the Mountains series is a seven-race motorcycle road racing series developed by Miller Motorsports Park, run by the Utah Sportbike Association (USBA) and sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) to encourage and develop fun and competitive road racing at the club and regional levels. The series features class structures that make it easy for competitors from multiple sanctioning groups and areas to compete, and race-day schedules that recognize that some competitors will travel long distances to compete, as well as a growing contingency program.
For more information on Miller Motorsports Park, call the track at (435) 277-RACE or visit the website at www.millermotorsportspark.com. For more information on the Utah Sportbike Association, visit their website at www.utahsba.com.