Stark Varg Racing Debut

Tortelli has already raced it locally, somewhere in Spain. There's some GoPro of it somewhere. I've seen a couple of other photos and clips pop up as well. Holeshots no problem!

But it will be great to see Tonus push the bike in a competitive setting. I believe with the torque of electric bikes, they will very quickly prove to be superior machines in Supercross/Arenacross. And battery range will not be an issue for the Varg in that type of racing. 

Found it. It was at Motocross de Tonneins in France. My bad.

The lighting reminds me of StarWest.

Those fence posts though...

Very interesting since the Stark power can be dialed down for AX so its not such a handful HP wise 

I was relistening to one of the interviews with Anton AKA "Turtle neck". And he was saying that they will provide a way for  the AMA or whatever org is sanctioning the race, the ability to monitor power levels. So teams can not cheat after a rule is made. I was thinking that if its a live view of the HP/wattage  . They could add that to the broadcast.   It would be cool to show how much power they are pulling and where.  If its not a live view now , maybe in the future it could be. 

I'm hoping looking forward to seeing how it works in Sand . But I think that SX is really were it will shine,and make some crazy things possible. It's cool to start seeing more and more videos showing up everyday. I hope that some of them show up at some local NESC races soon. I know there is at least 1 in the area.

Sheesshhh that thing is FAST

Nice, there’s a section where you can hear a 2 stroke, 4 stroke and the electric all together. Good stuff

The bike needs a neutral gear so you can rev it on the line….to get rid of some nerves..

Not sure why they call it racing debut since a Varg rider already stepped on the podium twice in women MX french championship (low key but official competition nonetheless).

Anyway there will also be Vargs competing in french SX championship, possibly as soon as 26th of August. Thomas Do will be an official Stark rider in SX2 competing against 250cc (we'll see what max power will be authorized and how it will be monitored) and there will be another rider competing with the Varg against 450cc bikes in SX1. No word yet on this rider, I find interesting that Josh Hill won the first event in this year's championship.

Here you can find an interview with Thomas Do (in french): https://dailymotocross.fr/thomas-do-cetait-une-opportunite-de-fou/

It was agreed Stark would not score championship points nor prize money, also Do will not participate in all the remaining events. What was the main reason for him to order a Varg ? Because he had to destroy the track he made in his backyard and rode for 20 years, and now he's building it back.

Do got a 7th place and 3rd place in the first SX1 events riding a YZ450F, I'm curious to see what he can do when he'll switch to SX2 on the Varg.

He already says no one will be able to beat him to the first turn.

No one at the french federation will be able to check how much power he actually has either, imo...

Put it on the chip and get that smell of burnt plastic going. Gets me pumped up every time!

Everything single test and review, pro riders and amateurs alike, highlighted the incredible acceleration and traction of the Varg.

Plus capping power would not affect the monster torque you get from 0 rpm (the Varg makes about 20 times more torque than any of its 450 competitors) so yeah, I understand why he's confident about holeshots !

This will be a time of innovation and "discovery" for Stark, for riders, and for federations/regulators so definitely curious to see how they adjust rules to allow the Varg to compete in anything less than open or top category.

Should be in their own class, end of story.

 Anton has said in multiple interviews that  Stark will provide a way for the federations to monitor the power output .  I wonder if it will be a real time wireless type thing , or an after the race download type of thing. If Stark is working directly with the Federation to allow Varg 's in , I'm assuming that they will also be providing  the way to monitor  the power levels.  Local races will probably be the places that will have a hard time regulating the Vargs until they have enough of them racing to justify whatever the cost may be for the way of checking the power. I wouldn't think that Stark would provide  the monitoring system to every local race promoter. But without knowing exactly how its done, who knows.    

It will be interesting  how they end up making the rules for Electric in the existing classes.   It seems like its going to be a bit harder to do than the 2 stroke to 4 stroke, without the Electric having a big power advantage at some level.    

That will be fun to see how the Varg is in the 250 class and what they do to it for that class VS the 450 class.  I wonder if they could run a smaller lighter battery on the 250 class bike since I assume they will have less power than the 450 class allows? 

I think its a smart move to let the Varg in , it will bring  some extra attention to the series .     

Mike Sleeter is working for Stark over here in Australia and i was talking to him over the past weekend. He was saying that Stark has been working with Motorcycling Australia on getting Starks on the line over here. 

He said that they have put forward a hp limit of 49hp for the 250 class and 60hp in the 450 class and they have a way to lock out the ecu's so the riders and teams can't mess with it. 

Apparently they are very close to lining up in Australia. Also check out Mike's instagram, there are some videos on there with average riders doing starts on a Stark vs a 450, the 450 got gapped 

IMHO racers want to race the fastest bikes, period.

Separate class makes sense if a new technology needs time to develop and maybe eventually reach the level of current tech (see Formula E, MotoE).

But if the Varg is already on par with the 450s there would be no point to separate the classes.

MotoE is a standing joke in road racing. The bikes weigh near 600lbs and race slowly over about 20 (twenty) miles. They are so range limited they don't do a sight lap and the spectators are all on first name basis.

No one doubts an E MX bike with a powerful motor can be fast. The Stark is touted as the World's Best Motocross Bike.  Still huge uncertainty surrounds the battery range for a 30 minute plus 2 lap moto with a red flag restart. As much uncertainty exists as to if the bike can go more than a few laps without overheating either the battery, the inverter and, especially the rotor.

These low intensity novelty events picked by the Starkies is hardly answering if The Worlds Best MX Bike is really fit for purpose.

Not sure I would describe it as huge uncertainty,

doubt that’s been starks biggest challenge to date. Surely a mechanic on standby with a spare battery would be sufficient.

I thought the Stark didn't have a swappable battery?

Watch this 4 minute video on how to remove and install the battery...

And in that scenario when you have depleted a battery and gone through a full cycle, at that point, would it not also require a cool-down period for the motor?  So swapping a battery is pointless without potentially damaging the motor?

I do not know the answer to that question for the Stark, but all other forms of electric racing, that is true so I am guessing here.

That would only be if the motor was running hot.  I think that its more of a between motos thing , than a during a moto thing anyway. I think the Varg will be a great bike and will do amazing things, but as positive as I am about them, I do not think they will be able to pull a lead big enough to swap a battery out during a moto.Even as fast as it looks like it will be to swap .    

What is good for the moto and what is possible are 2 different things. Earlier 4 stroke  race engine service intervals were sometimes measured in minutes , while electric motors are rated by 1000's of hours. A shortened lifespan by a few hundred hours  or more would still not get close to even with the gas engine's needs. At the Factory Team Pro level , They could run closer to the edge if needed. 

I could see it being kinda like when there were guys running a 2 stroke for SX and 4 stroke outdoors at first. SX should be easier to be able to run with the current batteries and its normally cooler during the SX seasons . The only reported overheating was on a 95f degree day so far. And as far as I know, nobody has reported the cause of the issue. They were able to get a fast guy to run 25 minutes that day without overheating too. 

Overall for a new to the sport type of powerplant, from a new manufacturer  it has been pretty solid in the limited media testing. The Cannondale was pretty obvious it had issues from the first time a real bike was ridden.  I really wanna see the  Varg ripping a Sand Track, Somebody get Jimmy D or Chris Canning on a Varg and send him to Southwick 

"The Stark is touted as the World's Best Motocross Bike.  Still huge uncertainty surrounds the battery range for a 30 minute plus 2 lap moto with a red flag restart."

Hi Goldie, I see that you're still irremediably attracted to any Varg thread.

I'm glad that you're now pretty confident in the Varg's potential. Yes it's great that it is competing in national championships less than 6 months after the first delivery of a brand new bike unlike anything else on the market, from an unknown startup, but just like you I'm looking forward to seeing it kick ass in top events in the coming months.

[off topic] Anyway since you regurgitate the same arguments in all Varg threads I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to finally correct what you wrote about MotoE.

The current MotoE bike, made by Ducati in its first joint project between Ducati RD and Ducati Corse weights a hefty 225 kg, that's definitely more than even equivalent production bikes (and light-years away from a MotoGP bike) but still under 500 pounds. You got it wrong by over 100 pounds, I expected better of you.

About spectators, Dorna and the FIM chose to run the MotoE championship along MotoGP events so that tens of thousands of live spectators can watch the races at every event, that makes it hard to remember the names of so many people. Both MotoE races are held on Saturdays, race 1 sandwiched between MotoGP and Moto3 qualifying sessions, race 2 being the final event of the day right after MotoGP sprint race.

Finally about the range, absolutely, it sure is the main limitation with current tech and they do race about 30 km (that is half the MotoGP sprint race). Yet I would not call it slow, the progress in 5 years has been incredible and now they're about 3 seconds a lap from Moto2 (765cc) laptimes, nothing earth-shattering but pretty respectable. In 2019 Energica MotoE weighted 265 kg, it lost 15 kg in its final version in 2022 before Ducati took over with its first electric motorcycle losing another 25 kg. The technology has evolved so much in the past 5 years that Ducati keep smashing MotoE lap records by 2 to 3 s at every event while racing the same distance with a 10% smaller battery (18 kWh). Also 150 hp, >280 km/h top speed, 0-100 km/h in 2.5 s (similar to MotoGP), 0-200 km/h under 7 s is nothing to be sneezed at. 45 min to charge it up to 80% and you can safely plug it as soon as you come back into the pits (it's liquid cooled).

And of course it is a thing of beauty, forza Ducati! [/off topic]

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It has to pass all the homologation rules and the ama pro racing rulebook has to be changed. For that to happen there has to be conversations between MXSports, Feld, and all the OEMs, namely Honda. I doubt that will happen.

It will happen when Honda or the other manufacturers have an electric motocross bike ready for market.

Yep.

The motor is water cooled and the cooling circuit can run when the bike is standing still using the built in fan. Shouldn’t be a problem to cool the engine down in 10 min and afterwards change the battery in 5 min. 

Yep there is so much that does not depend directly on Stark and they're obviously dwarfs compared to the established OEMs.

Their strategy seems to begin with some national championships and it already bears some fruit. It's easier to discuss with some federations on a case by case basis where OEM do not get a big say.

Sure, OEMs may feel threatened and not want to compete with electric motorcycles, but if the Stark begins racking up podiums and wins in various championships it won't be tenable for long to exclude it from top events (nor even race in its own category if it becomes as fast or faster than the main event).

That's feasible in Europe and Australia where the governing bodies are controlled by the clubs, but in the US the AMA is controlled by it's Board of Directors, who are the manufacturers excluding Stark...