A MotoGP bike to be raced at the Isle of Man TT! Okay maybe not quite, but as close as you could get to actually having one.
Honda will be racing the Honda RC 213V-S at the 2016 edition of the Isle of Man TT with Bruce Anstey piloting the bike. The RC 213V-S is the production model which Honda launched last year, which is a watered down version of the Honda Production Racer, which the Japanese company had made during the CRT days in MotoGP. The Production Racer was the same as the factory Honda bikes used by Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa barring the addition of a seamless gearbox and pneumatic valves.
All the changes notwithstanding the RC213V-S is the closest thing you can get today on the road to a MotoGP bike. And it would be fantastic to see how this technological marvel will fare on the twisty, scarily fast roads of the isle.
The New Zealand rider will be running his Honda RC 213V-S in Valvoline Racing colours by team Padgett’s Motorcycles. Bruce Anstey will run a race prepared version of the exotic bike in the RST Superbike and PokerStars Senior TT races. He is though yet to test the machine!
If you think that a MotoGP derived bike will blow the competition away on their slow production bikes, think again. Since this isn’t a production bike, there are no performance parts available off the shelf which would make it better suited to the rigours of the island course. With no previous data about the bike, the challenge of fine tuning it for the TT will increase exponentially.
Ten-time TT race winner Bruce Anstey –
“It has always been a dream of mine to ride a MotoGP bike at the TT and this is as close as I will ever get, Clive is the only person in the world who could put something like this together and if he says it is OK I am with him 100%. He hasn’t just pulled it out of the crate and said we are racing it. Clive and the team have done a lot of work to the bike to make it ready for the TT.”
“The RCV should be an absolute weapon because it has loads of power but it feels as nimble as a 600.” he said. “It should be stable too as it’s over 2 inches longer than a Fireblade but is still really small and compact. I am really looking forward to seeing how it handles through the quick corners because it will be able to turn so fast.”
Valvoline Racing by Padgetts Motorcycles team boss Clive Padgett said that the idea for the incredible venture to race a production version of Marc Marquez’s Grand Prix bike on the 37 ¾ mile Mountain course originally came from a customer:
“I was having a few pints of Guinness with a customer who had just bought an RCV from us and he said wouldn’t it be great to see one of them going down Bray Hill. That planted the seed in my head and it has been germinating ever since,” he said.
He continued:
“The TT is all about pioneering innovation and I really wanted to do something different. I see this as being in the spirit of what Mr Honda did when he first came to the TT with his race bikes in 1959. I think this will bring even more global attention to the TT this year and that can only be a good thing. I am really giddy about it all. I might be over 50 now but inside I am still a 19 year old racer!”
Preparing the RC213V-S for the rigours of the world’s toughest motorcycle race has been a huge challenge for Clive Padgett and his Valvoline backed squad. “It has been a very difficult project to pull together,” he admits. “We have had to beef the bike up for the TT course and we can’t get anything off the shelf so everything has had to be made bespoke. Things like the wheels, the K-Tech forks, the rear shocks, the brakes and the radiator guards have all had to be specially made.”
The RCV’s standard package produces a mere 159bhp but with the £10,000 race kit fitted, which includes a titanium exhaust and a special ECU, the V4 delivers over 200bhp. “I love Bruce to bits and I wanted to give him the best motorcycle in the world to ride. That’s what this bike is all about,” concluded Clive Padgett.
Of the last 39 TT races that the team has started around the Mountain Course the Batley team has finished in the top four on no less than 33 occasions and of those 27 were podium places with 11 wins. The team is probably most well known for Ian Hutchinson’s five wins in a week in 2010. The team has also secured numerous lap and race records including Bruce Anstey’s RST Superbike win in 2015 in a record winning time of 128.749mph (1:45.29.902).
Padgetts Motorcycles, through their partner relationship with Honda, secured a number of the new RC213V-S machines in March 2016 and these will be available to purchase from the Batley based dealership.
