History will be made next season when iconic Italian brand MV Agusta makes their return to the World Championship in the Moto2 class, more than 40 years after they raced in Grand Prix – 42 years to be exact.
So, it’s with great expectations that we’re waiting to see the new race bike on track, and MV Agusta just made our day a little bit better by showing the first renders of how the Moto2 race bike will look like.
And the truth is, the MV Agusta’s Moto2 race bike is stunning!
The prototype has been developed in house at the CRC, MV’s special development center, and uses the typical trellis frame, the MV Agusta style fuel tank and rear end, as well as having an air-intake hole at the front fairing that mimics the iconic diamond-shaped headlight made popular by the F4 sportbike created by the design master Massimo Tamburini working at the time with Claudio Castiglioni.
2019 will be a special season for the Moto2 class, with the introduction of the new Triumph 765 cc three-cylinder engine, which replaces the current inline-four 600 cc made by Honda.
The change in engine architecture was one of the reasons that made Giovanni Castiglioni, president of MV Agusta, accept the return to racing in Grand Prix level, because his brand has become an expert in creating three-cylinder engines to use in production models like the naked Brutale or the F3 sportbike.
Even though MV Agusta is creating the Moto2 race bike, this project has the Forward Racing team as a partner, and the structure led by Giovanni Cuzzari will be in charge of getting the bike on track for the next three years. The riders are still unknown at the moment.
Another interesting point to mention in the return of MV Agusta to Grand Prix racing, is that Giovanni Castiglioni wants to develop new technical solutions that might be applied, later on, to road going models.
MV Agusta’s president is already thinking about developing a new frame based on the structure that’s being built for the Moto2 prototype, and at the same time he says that a new generation of the iconic F4 superbike won’t be built in the next two years. MV is already thinking about replacing the current F4, and a new F5 (or F4) will only be shown to the public after 2020.
As for the Moto2 prototype, MV Agusta and Forward Racing will have the chance to see what the bike is capable of during the official Moto2 tests with the new Triumph 765 engine in next July.
For sure the team won’t have their work cut out for them, but because no one really knows this new engine, this might well be a great opportunity for MV Agusta to return and make the headlines.