Last year KTM won the constructor’s Moto3 championship and during the pre-season tests, teams fielding either the KTM RC 250 GP production race in either the KTM or Kalex chassis, seemed to have distinct performance advantage.
The opening round of the Moto3 class was won by Louis Salom and in the top ten spots, eight riders were on either KTM’s or KTM Kalex’s and the remaining two were on Mahindra MGP3O’s, while the Suter Honda’s and FTR Honda’s couldn’t break into the KTM dominance, and evidently Honda doesn’t like playing second fiddle to the Austrian manufacturer and has asked for rule changes.
There were already complaints by other teams using Honda engines, especially by Alfredo Mastropasqua of Team FMI who believes that KTM is distorting the spirit of Moto3, as the class should be inexpensive and about the riders and not the manufacturers.
Honda Moto3 engines have a bore of 78mm which makes it last longer, thus costs less but it is also less powerful, KTM on the otherhand has 81mm bore which lets the engine rev higher (14,000 rpms) making it more powerful, but the downside is that it requires more maintenance, so it costs more (the production racer is around €380,000) but none of the teams seem to be complaining about the costs, as many have switched to the Austrian manufacturer for the 2013 season.
Honda has asked for a rule change on Moto3 engines using the ever useful ‘cost saving measures’, and the GP Commission has approved new regulations for the 2014 and 2015 seasons during the weekend’s GP in Qatar.
Here are the new rules, that now fix the engine package cost at € 68,000 for 2014 and limit the rpms in 2015.
Changes to the regulations concerning supply of engines for the Moto3 class were approved.
The objective is to reduce the cost of the engine programme for the teams and to ensure that there is equality of performance between engines supplied by the same manufacturer.
With effect from 2014 engines will be provided to Championship Organiser by the manufacturers in three batches during the season.
The engines will be sealed and distributed randomly by the Technical Director and will become the property of the teams, with no requirement for them to be returned under any “service contract”.
When an engine has completed the normal cycle of use it will be replaced by another sealed engine and it is anticipated that the six engines will be more than sufficient for the season.
At the end of the season the team then owns six engines with only minimal mileage accrued which can be used for testing or sold on.
The fixed cost for the engine package is €68,000.
The concession to allow timing chain replacement on Honda engines at regular intervals, which involves supervised breaking of the engine seals, will be extended until the end of 2014.
With effect from 2015 the maximum revs permitted for Moto3 machines will be reduced from 14,000 RPM to 13,500 RPM and the timing chain replacement concession will be cancelled.