Giulio Bardi

Hero EBR

Eric Buell himself is a former racer, a real enthusiast and also a business man. Sometimes I feel he built his company just to go racing. This is what people like about him, passionate to the core, because racing is fun.

In AMA EBR did well, to be fair. If you have a mass produced motorcycle it is somewhat easier to have parts. When you have a bike built in a few units, you have to make a lot yourself, which is a big challenge Eric took on. It’s not really true that you can fix anything with money. In racing, you need people, those with know-how willing to do the 15-hour days.

Back when I was team-representative for WSB, we started talking to Eric, and he shared the desire to run in WSB. Though back then his production was so limited we could not allow it, the rules could not be bent.

I think it is fair to say it has been tough for us so far in WSB. Nobody goes into racing not hoping to be competitive. Even if you use reason and have a plan, always in your mind is that maybe today will be our good day, that’s the driving force behind racing. I don’t know anybody in this paddock that didn’t start from passion. Our target is to be in the top 15 scoring points on a regular basis, but it has been difficult. For sure the level here in WSB is only matched by MotoGP, and that’s not judging the talent, but the quantity of that talent. It’s the best from everywhere and that’s a fact. You have to be good to be here. The best bikes are here, you may have copies in national series, but the real one is always much better, like a good painting. We knew that coming in, us, Eric and Hero, but we still needed targets. First was to grow the performance, and we are close to achieving that. The second part is to make the top 15. I can’t tell you when we will do this, but before the end of the year I am confident we will. And this was the worst year to come in! We have sealed motors which holds back development, we cannot test and the schedule is incredible. We also have no data, even though we have two very good riders in Aaron Yates and Geoff May, this is tough. Yes, they are a little frustrated by the situation right now, but they didn’t come into this blindfolded either and knew the challenge before the start.

Our engine is very different, and EBR build their own, although there is the Rotax print on it, and it is designed to fit the EBR chassis. The biggest challenge was to try and put the major puzzle together along with the production EBR by a certain point. Then the new rules came out. We wished it was earlier as we could have saved a lot of stress. A lot of our parts are standard parts from the production machine, so making Phillip Island was hard. We went, but were not ready at all. Yet we must start somewhere, and mechanics are never ready so at some point you must begin. We have things to resolve, and yes, we often chase our own tail a bit. We are up against people who have been racing here for 25 years, from mega-factories. It’s hard to go up against that, but Eric is using racing to develop the road bike, and that is unique.