Pre-season testing in Spain revealed that the EBR 1190 Typhon gave away about 9mph on the straights to the fully-faired RR. So, Pegasus Race Team decided to enter the British, European, American Race Series using the faired bike for fast circuits and the Typhon for slower tighter ones. Last weekend, despite setting what was probably the fastest lap of the Lausitzring on a naked bike ever, the team was still three seconds a lap down on bikes like the Aprilia RSV4, BMW S1000RR and Ducati Desmosedici, so put the fairing back on brought home a first and second place.

Pegasus Race Team is the largest EBR race team in the world and has set out to independently develop a naked bike based on the EBR 1190RR platform and plans to sell that kit back to owners of 1125R and 1125CRs worldwide later this year.

Practice for the Lausitzring race was the first time that the team has ever run the Typhon with the full-power, 185rwhp, 1190 motor instead of the stock 1125cc unit.

“I am really impressed about the bike in this configuration, I never rode something what even came close to that,” says the team’s ace rider, Harald Kitsch. “It handles like a Supermotard, but have the power of a Superbike.” Harald has some experience with powerful nake bikes too, having won the 2009 KTM Super Duke Battle.

Pegasus is up against harder challenges than just campaigning a naked in a series for superbikes. They aren’t equipped with sophisticated wheelie and traction control systems like the other teams.

“Generally we say the v-twin brings benefits in and out of the corners, but that’s changing as traction control systems make more progress,” explains team manager Jens Kruper. “Ok, there is still the weight advantage, the 1190 is at 165 Kilo really light, but that’s somewhere BMW is pushing too. On one hand, it is fascinating to compete with people with those capabilities. On the other, we must understand that we are just underdogs compared to their development and testing resources. But after more than 10 years of Buell road racing we are hard to scare, our own tuning programm with the M-TeK Engines (we used only in the practice sessions), the suspension work with AST, new understanding of aerodynamics, all that will pay out at the end. BEARS and SBK Open is a wonderful playground, because we have nearly no technical limits and nothing needs to be homologated.”

In the Saturday SBK Open race, Kitsch came second behind the official BMW race development team. On Sunday, when that team was not racing, he placed first, despite suffering an oil leak mid-race.

Pegasus plans to display a production ready version of the Typhon conversion kit at Assen in two weeks.

Pegasus

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