The first appearance of the KTM Maehr Superstock Team on the traditional Monza racing circuit came to a premature end three laps into the race when Rene Mähr had shut down his RC8 and return to the pits.
The newly formed team and their talented rider Rene Maehr already experienced some difficulty with the KTM 1190 RC8 during training for the third race in the FIM Superstock 1000 World Cup on the spirited and legendary racing circuit at Monza. The bike was launched in the spring of 2008 and KTM and the team have declared their first season on the racing circuit as one in which to learn and to gain experience.
Unlike the first two races in Valencia and Assen, it was unfortunately not possible to come up with a suitable engine and chassis setup to suit the famous Italian circuit, which features long straights, hard braking zones and tight chicanes.
Despite a significant improvement at the end of the warm up for the World Cup race over 11 laps, the first trip to Monza ended in disappointment for the team and the recently launched KTM machine when Rene was forced to pull off the circuit with a defective clutch.
Rene Maehr: "Even if we did have a tough job ahead of us at Monza, at the end of the day I am most disappointed that we weren't able to solve the problem during training. Being unable to finish the race is doubly disappointing because I wasn't able to test out the improvements we made during the warm-up at race speed. Nevertheless our experience in Monza continues the learning process and this is the task we set ourselves for the 2008 racing season."
The next race in the FIM Superstock 1000 World Cup is from June 13th-15th on the Grand Prix circuit at Germany's Nuerburgring.
Picture Credit: Porrozzi F.
