JP: And what will the new single-tire regulations bring?
CE: “I think the single tire rule will contribute to eliminating the doubts about equality. I don’t know if it will contribute definitively to making the races more or less hotly contested, but for me this was not our principal objective. Our principal objective is to reduce costs because we are in a word economic crisis. I have no problems with the 125 and 250 classes, which, of course, will continue forever as world championship classes.”
JP: Yes, I wrote that (that 125 and 250 might lose world championship status): It was personal speculation and with its own logic.
CE: “Yes, it is a speculation that you (journalists) have been making since 1992. Since then people have been coming to me to say that there are rumors that 125 and 250 are about to end. Well, that is not so. There will always be three classes and they will always be world championships. If I was worried about 125 and 250 it is because they were entering into a spiral of increasing costs.”
JP: And how will this be solved, especially in 250?
CE: “What I am trying to do is create an inexpensive bike which won’t get us into this kind of problems, and that will be competitive, and that the riders who race this bike will be able move on later to a MotoGP bike. And of course, that the class would be open to many brands. Thus we have developed the concept of the 600cc bike, clearly defining the engine, and with the idea of making this a class for prototypes the definition of a prototype is very clear. And what is more, if you read the MotoGP regulations it is stated that those motors that are not entered by a constructor must be approved by the Grand Prix Commission. This meant that when Peter Clifford made the WCM (in 2003) there was a problem: that bike used a Yamaha engine and Yamaha had not approved of that engine being raced in MotoGP. If Yamaha wanted to race with
a modified version of its production engine built to conform to the current 800 rules, it could do so because the owner of the Yamaha engine is Yamaha. And having said that, the cheapest way to arrive economically at a competitive motorcycle is to define the engine, not to say whether an engine has to be a production engine or not. I have defined a four-cylinder engine. Those who want to race with a triple or a twin need to tell us what motor they are referring to and we will try and apply weight compensations to make them competitive, and a price limit…this is the crux of the matter. This way we will have a bike that is inexpensive and that will allow a lot of people to enter with the money that I give them. (Here Ezpeleta refers to the “Dorna money” that is paid to full-season entrants.) I have nothing against the 250s, but this could not continue; it could only have continued as a single-brand championship.”
JP: Why was the only solution a single-brand series?
CE: “Because there was only one competitive brand. Why? Because the winning bike was only for sale from one source and there were only six bikes available. If you didn’t have one of the six you didn’t have any chance at all of winning the championship. And this bike costs more than the teams can afford. This is not Aprilia's fault. Aprilia at least kept making bikes. The cause of this is that the others just said 'we are leaving.'”
JP: And there is no way to keep a brand like KTM in the 250 class?
CE: “KTM made their own decision. But to convince KTM to continue racing and developing a bike and to get Aprilia to take them on, that would have driven the costs to shoot higher. That is why I prefer to help Aprilia and let KTM, who took the decision to leave, do whatever they feel like doing. It would cost me a lot more to help KTM stay than to help out with the cost of five or six Aprilias.”
