Watch and Hear the New Triumph Moto2 Racing Engine in Action
This 765cc triple is music to our ears.
Proving that it's good at much more than just retro motorcycles, Triumph has developed the next-generation racing engine for the FIM Moto2 World Championship. The British bike firm is replacing Honda as the exclusive supplier for the middleweight racing class positioned right below the elite MotoGP racing series.
The outgoing Honda is a 600cc inline-four and the new Triumph engine is a 765cc three-cylinder that will make its official debut in June of 2018, for the 2019 season. It’s based on the street version of the Triumph 765 that powers the new 2018 Street Triple. Triumph won’t tell us specs like horsepower or torque ratings, but we know the range-topping Street Triple RS makes 121 horsepower and 56 lb-ft of twist. We expect a healthy boost in those numbers in the Moto2 engine.
Modifications to bring this power plant from the street to the track include a taller first gear ratio, a modified cylinder head for optimized gas flow, titanium valves and stiffer springs, a tunable slipper clutch, a specific race ECU, a different sump, and a few other tweaks to fine-tune it for racing duty.
Moto2 test rider and 2009 125cc World Champion Julian Simon put the new Triumph racing motor through its paces on the Ciudad del Motor de Aragón track, in Spain. According to Triumph, the racing engine is “ahead of expectations” in terms of power, torque, and durability. In the test runs, the bike delivered “good, consistent, and competitive lap times,” the company said.
To add to the hype, Triumph released a video of the development test for the new engine. We don’t actually get to see a video of the bike with the new engine whip around a track, but we do see it in action in the form of a prototype bike (which looks just like the current Triumph Daytona 675R race bike) on a dyno, along with some cool still images of it being tested on the track. The engine makes a delightful sound that could only come from a triple.
The video ends with a hint that “there’s even more to come in 2018” which has our fingers officially crossed for some version of the 765cc engine to be available in a Daytona street bike.
