Difficult Monza for KTM

From KTM Racing

The first appearance of the KTM Maehr Superstock Team on the traditional Monza racing circuit came to a premature end three laps into the race when Rene Maehr had shut down his RC8 and return to the pits.

The newly formed team and Maehr already experienced some difficulty with the KTM 1190 RC8 during training for the third race in the FIM Superstock 1000 World Cup on the spirited and legendary racing circuit at Monza. Unlike the first two races in Valencia and Assen, it was unfortunately not possible to come up with a suitable engine and chassis setup to suit the famous Italian circuit, which features long straights, hard braking zones and tight chicanes.

Despite a significant improvement at the end of the warm up for the 11-lap race, the first trip to Monza ended in disappointment for the team and the recently launched KTM machine when Rene was forced to pull off the circuit with a defective clutch.

Even if we did have a tough job ahead of us at Monza, at the end of the day I am most disappointed that we weren't able to solve the problem during training," Maehr said. "Being unable to finish the race is doubly disappointing because I wasn't able to test out the improvements we made during the warm-up at race speed."

The next race in the FIM Superstock 1000 World Cup is June 13-15 at Germany's Nurburgring.