Triumph has been the sole engine supplier for the past five years to the Moto2 world championships.
"Triumph’s job is to supply engines to 32 riders at 22 GPs, stretching from March to November and from Argentina to Japan. It’s a massive undertaking, run with military precision by Triumph and ExternPro, the Dorna-owned company that builds the engines at Aragon MotorLand in Spain."
They decided not to do MotoGP, but instead as we know they decided to focus on SX and MX"
"Which begs the obvious question: will Triumph take the next step and move into MotoGP?No, that’s not for us,” says Bloor. “However, we are taking a step in that direction by entering the world of off-road grands prix, through the MX2 and Supercross world championships.”Triumph’s decision to attack off-road racing – announced in December 2022 – surprised many people. Then ten months later by Ducati’s announcement that it too will enter the motocross arena. “We are looking to grow, progress and attract younger riders through motocross and Supercross,”
So, with massive racing experience in Moto2 GP with their engines will they have a technical advantage over the incumbents (KTM, Yamaha, Honda, Kawi, Suzuki) power trains? Are they bringing new technology? insights? into SX and MX?
I don’t follow road racing at all but on face value wouldn’t being the only engine supplier in a series limit outright performance gains? Without competition there’s no need to push the limits of development. Now reliability wise possibly they have an advantage with that experience but I don’t think there will be an outright performance advantage over teams like Star or pro circuit.
One makes series do not lead to big developments, but you do learn a lot by getting miles on things.
The hardest bit is making sure they are all the same, which is harder than you think.
I'm gonna say they will have no advantage at all. They will be at a disadvantage for some time for one simple reason; data. The needs of an MX engine are very different from road racing. They just don't have the data to fully develop the engine package. The other manufacturers have decades of experience and data to pull from.
Ohlins is perhaps the most prestigious suspension brand in motorsports. They are practically non existent in MX/SX at a professional level. They also had major growing pains when getting into mountain bike suspension.
This sport is data driven and they don't have it.
KTM has been building a winning 250cc single cylinder 4-stroke engine in Moto3 for years now.
Not sure if it is relatable to their current MX engines or not.
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I'd say the odds of this initial engine being a surprise advantage are very slim. Triumph is coming into the game with an all-new bike and zero experience. I'd say the big surprise will be if they're even mildly competitive. I will be duly impressed if so. If they get even one holeshot in any supercross gate drop, it will be a hearty "well done!" from me.
Materials wise, i would say they leaned a lot, but again , those motor's are rev limited, and i believe that they are limited on how many they can have.
i can count on one hand how many Moto2 and 3 bikes i have seen blow up, and yet there are teams in MX2 that struggle to get two races out of a motor.
I think Honda went 7 seasons in Indycar without a failure, for the same reasons, the rules mean the engines are all the same and not highly stressed.
They are using KTM 2018 engine so yes its good base but nothing special.
All good comments. This reminds me of the problem of technology transfer that many companies in high tech have. For example, I used to work at Microsoft Research, the pure R&D arm of Microsoft. One of the biggest problems faced there was taking good ideas and discoveries and transferring them to a commercial product. Hard to do. Not all cool, new ideas make it to the real world. Now Triumph is not a behemoth like Microsoft, but could their Moto2 GP engine team give the MX team some Ideas and guidance? Food for thought. Time will tell.
I firmly believe that, at a minimum, Triumph's PRODUCTION engine will be on par with all the other OEMs. They've certainly purchased all the other colors, had them on the dyno, & fully tore down every one of them to understand what they are competing against.
Their RACE engines may take some time to develop, but they 100% have the engineering expertise to make it happen quickly (1-2 years).
Even if it is a superior engine package, their current rider roster wont be an advantage. The advantage goes to the team with the best rider. It will be a good few years of development at least. I don’t believe good equipment closes the gap to the elite riders at the front.
Honestly, the engine is going to have to be 50HP stock to be competitive right away... That way you'd never need to modify it..
A lot more relevance to MX2.
While some difference - the Moto3 engine is a 250cc 4T single. And basically “open” as far as design/mods go. KTM could surely take some design aspects over to their MX engines.
The Moto2 category that currently uses Triumph engines; uses production (lightly modified) 3 cyl 765cc engines from a Street Bike. Far less relevance.
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