Euro Moto Sportbike: Winkler injured at home and ERC is calling it a day

The WSC Racing Team will not be competing at the race weekend in Assen, the Netherlands. The reason for this is an injury sustained by rider Micky Winkler during a cycle race last weekend. Winkler suffered an elbow injury. According to the latest medical assessment, he will initially need to rest for around ten days. Under these circumstances, it would not be advisable for him to race at Assen. The team has therefore mutually agreed to withdraw from the race and give their rider the time he needs to make a full recovery.

“Bad luck continues to dog us this season,” says team boss Roland Matthes. “The faulty fuel pump before the second race the weekend before last, and now an injury. We put the motorbike through its paces again last week; everything was fine. Micky was really motivated again. And now this.” The WSC Racing team is now fully focused on the upcoming home race at the Nürburgring. Micky Winkler should be fit again by then, so that the team can go all out in front of their home crowd.

Changes afoot at Team ERC

Oliver Svendsen had already thrown in the towel before the race at Oschersleben and handed in his notice to Team ERC Kawasaki. Felix Kauertz stepped in to replace him, and together with the Belgian Sasha de Vits and the Frenchman Jules Bercot, they made plans for the rest of the season. Following a mediocre start at the Sachsenring, they had sat out two races but were back in action at Oschersleben, complete with motorbikes that were lightning-fast compared to those at the Sachsenring. De Vits and Bercot finished on the podium, though both were subsequently stripped of their results following a protest.

The motorbikes were not running with the regulation-compliant mapping of the Mectronik electronics. Jürgen Höpker-Seibert from Kawasaki Germany can shed further light on the matter. This is because the ERC team had not entered the race with the intention of cheating using the modified mapping – which delivers around 10 PS – but had done so with the promoter’s approval.

“The manufacturer Mectronik offered us an electronic mapping,” explains Höpker-Seibert. The promoter approved the use of this mapping and included it in the Eligible List, which is regularly updated, expanded or reduced across all classes as part of the Balance of Performance. “The map provided by Mectronik,” adds the Mectronik manufacturer, “will not be used in the World Championship. The map is a custom map that has been created to bridge the performance gap with the National/International or BSB regulations. Approval of the map is the responsibility of the respective racing series.” In Euro Moto, both the World Championship and BSB regulations are applied.

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Fed up with squabbles

The ERC team from Karlsruhe has also commented on the incident: “Firstly, we would like to emphasise that at no point did our team intend to gain an unfair sporting advantage over the competition. All technical measures and decisions were taken in the run-up to the race weekend in close consultation with Kawasaki, Mectronik and the organiser and promoter, Euro Moto. Prior to the race weekend in Oschersleben, our team was granted explicit approval to use the control unit and the corresponding mapping. This approval followed a considerable amount of technical work and time investment, which we undertook jointly with Mectronik. The programming and tuning of the electronics were carried out with full transparency towards the relevant authorities.”

The team had already lodged an appeal. The possibility of seeking an interim injunction had also been considered. However, ahead of Assen, team owner Uwe Reinhardt made a swift decision and pulled the plug on the Euro Moto Team ERC, for which he provides the financial backing through his company Prokasro. According to Reinhardt, the riders can continue to use the equipment, something that could not be managed in such a short space of time. For ERC itself, this brings the brief Euro Moto adventure to an end.