Leon Haslam to HRC Honda
36-year-old set to join Alvaro Bautista in factory squad on all-new Fireblade
‘Honda have welcomed him with open arms’
By the time the new World Superbike season swings into action at Phillip Island next February, it will have been 13 years since Honda last won the championship when James Toseland did the business back in 2007. It’s a dismal record for the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer which is why next year sees an all-new Fireblade that Marc Marquez is helping to develop, a new team and two new riders with Alvaro Bautista and, as we can now confirm, former BSB champ Leon Haslam.
Up to the end of 2018, Honda’s WSB team was a joint collaboration between the Ten Kate outfit and Honda’s European arm. For 2019, HRC (the Honda Racing Corporation), the dedicated outfit behind Honda’s MotoGP effort, took over the reins in a partnership also involving Moriwaki and Althea Racing.
But for 2020 it will now be a solo HRC attack as Bautista jumps ship from Ducati to be joined by Haslam, who is being replaced at Kawasaki by Alex Lowes.
Honda runs in the Haslam family blood with father Ron having been associated with the manufacturer for the majority of his career. The new Blade, meanwhile (see also P6) is being extensively windtunnel tested and is receiving track input in Japan from Stefan Bradl as well as 8-time MotoGP world champion Marquez.
Honda have often been criticised over the last decade for their perceived lack of commitment to superbike racing and seem to have finally decided that enough is enough. So, for the first time since Colin Edwards stormed to two WSB titles in the early 2000s, the firm has constructed a superbike with the sole purpose of racing. As we’ve seen most recently with the MotoGP-inspired Ducati Panigale V4R, it’s the pure definition of ‘homologation special’.
For the past five years, Honda have been beaten in the prestigious Suzuka 8-Hours endurance race, by Yamaha and Kawasaki. In fact the firm’s last winning rider lineup in 2013 and 2014 comprised Michael van der Mark and... Haslam. Just how good Honda’s new Fireblade is remains to be seen but like the Ducati it has winglets as well as a moveable wing-like device within the front fairing; moving exterior bodywork would not be allowed but this innovation could prove to exploit a loophole in the rules.
Haslam may have been dumped by Kawasaki but Honda have welcomed him with open arms. He has years of experience with the marque in both BSB and WSB paddocks – and this might be just the renaissance his career craves.