2018 will be the last year Moto2 will run on the Honda engines. As already announced, the Triumph 765 cc three-cylinder will be selected for the intermediate class from 2019. It only makes sense that frame builders are already taking steps to prepare for this change, and Kalex appears to be the one furthest away in development.
As we already reported, A Kalex with a triumph drive was in the hands of Jesko Raffin in Valencia for the last few days, who was selected as a tester for this new project. The development team, on the other hand, is led by Michael Ferger and the trip to the Spanish track was the absolute debut for the team and the bike.
Unfortunately, bad weather conditioned the tests. Raffin was supposed to test for three days, but the adverse conditions left him only one day to test.
After this debut, Alexander Baumgärtel, CEO and Chief Designer of Kalex, summed up.
“Overall, we are very happy with how things went on our first rollout with the motorcycle in 2019. It was, so to speak, a rollout without any problems – he explains happily – We were also lucky with the weather on Monday when the conditions were very good for most of the day. Unfortunately, the two remaining days literally fell into the water. Apart from that, Jesko Raffin did a great job. He made no mistakes and also convinced with extremely valuable statements. “
“We started our program with the current bicycle, which is equipped with an“ end-of-life ”engine that has significantly less power. The purpose of this exercise with two reference runs was to give Jesko the feeling of a racing bike after his four-month break, but from the third run we focused exclusively on working with the new bike – he continued – After only five laps, his comment was: “The bike feels like a KALEX”. That was a great relief for us. That’s what we worked for and that has always been our goal, at least in terms of self-confidence and the feeling for the front. ”
In this first test, the Kalex test team also used a standard motor for electronics and clutch.
“We were able to set a 1’36.6 with Jesko – emphasized Baumgärtel – and this is certainly a nice reference time for us. We are therefore very satisfied with our first rollout. The driver’s first impressions are mostly positive and there were absolutely no problems. Of course, it would have been extremely helpful to collect more laps and kilometers, but at the beginning It was a very good start to our test program with this bike. We have already reached a level that we would only have expected for the second or third rollout with standard components. The driver’s feeling with the chassis was immediately good. For this reason, it doesn’t make sense to think about a next test at the moment. In this regard, we will have to wait to receive the ECU for this engine. “