Noriyuki Haga Makes Welcome Return to SBK
with Renegade Ducati
26 January 2004
Japan’s spectacular and very popular Noriyuki Haga
has signed today in Rome at the FGSport headquarters with the British
Renegade Ducati team and will rejoin the World Superbike Championship
this year as teammate to rising U.K. star, Leon Haslam.
Haga (28), who has eleven SBK wins to his credit (third
among active participants), will test his new Ducati 999 RS for the
first time at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit of the Valencian Community on
February 2nd and 3rd.
The signing of Haga, coming only weeks after the news
that Australia’s Garry McCoy will ride for the Caracchi NCR Ducati
team, means that the championship has now been bolstered by the entries
of two of roadracing’s most exciting riders, both world famous
for their broad-sliding, tire-smoking styles and both out to challenge
the defending champion Ducati Fila team of Britain’s James Toseland
and France’s Regis Laconi.
Renegade is one of several new teams joining SBK for
2004, along with the World Endurance Champion Zongshen squad, entering
Italian Piergiorgio Bontempi and Australian Warwick Nowland on GSX-R1000
Suzukis, and the Dutch Ten Kate Honda team, dominant in World Supersport
over the last two seasons and now moving up to the Superbike class with
reigning the World Supersport Champion, Australian Chris Vermeulen (22),
entrusted to campaign Honda’s much-awaited and very promising
CBR1000RR Fire Blade.
The start of the 2004 SBK season at Valencia on February
29th is now just five weeks away, but two weeks prior to Round One the
World Superbike and World Supersports teams will converge for their
final pre-season tests at Valencia on February 11-13, giving all teams
an opportunity to try the latest compounds from Pirelli, exclusive supplier
of tires for the World Superbike, World Supersport and European Superstock
classes under the new rules intended to level the playing field for
competitors.
With Haga now signed, the already strong Superbike entry
list now promises an even more exciting season, the seventeenth in the
history of the FIM’s premier series for 1000cc production-based
machines.
Paolo Flammini, FGSport C.E.O. said: “We are delighted
to welcome back Noriyuki Haga to the World Superbike. He is a Superbike
symbol and we are sure he will grant the fans unmatchable emotions throughout
the current and future seasons”.
Mark Griffiths, Renegade team principal added: “In
Haga and Haslam I believe we have a very formidable partnership to contest
the 2004 Superbike World Championship. The tyre rule enables fair competition
for everyone, and we are delighted to be joining the series perhaps
at the beginning of a new era for WSBK”.
Noriyuki Haga: “I am really happy to be returning to the Superbike
World Championship and to be riding a Ducati for the first time in 10
years ! I can promise my fans that I have not lost my exciting style
and I intend to finally claim the WSBK title”.
See series calendar for SBK
World Superbike Championship 2004
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Superbike Teams Get to Grips with New Pirellis
