Apreco team owner Brandhorst on the IDM partnership with Ten Kate

Ten Kate has been closely associated with Yamaha in recent years. The Dutch tuning firm has now ended its partnership with the Japanese manufacturer and will compete in the Supersport World Championship with a Chinese manufacturer in future. A few days ago, the Yamaha team Apreco – which is set to compete in the IDM Superbike class with Dirk Geiger and in the IDM Supersport class with Lennox Lehmann in 2027 – also announced the end of its partnership with Ten Kate. However, when asked, team owner Corine Brandhorst explains that the two matters are unrelated.

“I think the biggest difficulty in this situation is,” she says, describing the current situation, “that, viewed from the outside, everyone thinks these two things are now linked. On the one hand, there was a rumour that Ten Kate was switching to another brand. And on the other hand, my team has links to Yamaha and, at the same time, a long-standing partnership with Ten Kate.”

Yamaha’s plans for the 2027 IDM

Ten Kate has now also officially confirmed its participation in the World Championship with the Chinese motorbike manufacturer. “I have no contact with Ten Kate at World Championship level,” Brandhorst assures us, “nor do I have any knowledge of it. But of course, the last few days haven’t been much fun for me and my team either, as we’ve been approached by other teams and riders asking whether we’d also be switching to another manufacturer, and on top of that, a rumour slowly began to circulate that Twan Smits would be staying in the WSBK – some even suggested that I’d be quitting altogether. None of this is true, which is why we have drawn up the press release together with Yamaha to provide clarity and transparency.”

None of this is true.

Corine Brandhorst

This press release discussed the future of the IDM team, including matters relating to Ten Kate, and reported on Twan Smits’ World Championship contract, which means he will not be competing alongside Dirk Geiger in the IDM Superbike class in 2027. “To be completely clear and transparent on this point too: as I have already read in the press, the claim that the split between me and Ten Kate came as no surprise – that is not true,” emphasises Brandhorst. “I had already informed Ten Kate during the fifth IDM race at Assen that our collaboration would be changing. In 2025, they did a brilliant job with the R1 for Twan, but on the R6 side with Lennox, there were a few challenges.”

“We never made any of this public,” she says, “but for 2026 we built our own R9 bikes from scratch, entirely independently, with Dirk and Lennox. There was no involvement whatsoever from Ten Kate, apart from the supply of engines, which we switched to engines from Yamaha’s racing division during the course of the racing season, as both Lennox and Dirk were experiencing engine problems (mostly). If you look at the Ten Kate R9 and the Apreco R9, you’ll notice many differences. Similarly, for the R1 that we built from scratch for Twan in 2026, the engines were supplied, whilst we handled the entire construction and development – including the triple clamp and swingarm – ourselves in collaboration with Yamaha’s racing division.”

Yamaha developed the Apreco team independently

As the season progressed, the rivals in the IDM Supersport and Superbike classes found themselves increasingly struggling to keep up with the Yamaha lads. “In the course of 2026, we decided, together with Yamaha’s racing department,” reports Brandhorst, “to take over the entire data engineering for the R1 in-house for 2027 as well. This meant that Ten Kate’s contribution between 2025 and 2027 shifted from the initial work on the R1 and R6 (2025) to just engines (partly R9 and R1) and data development for the R1 (2026), and by 2027 would ‘possibly’ be limited to engine construction for the R1 (2027) alone. That is why, in 2026, we also changed our name from Apreco-Ten Kate (2025) to Apreco-Yamaha.”

“Ultimately, we have been in negotiations with Ten Kate since September regarding the supply of engines for the R1, as we want to field two R1s in the IDM, which means a total of eight engines, but at the same time the Yamaha Racing Division also wants to take this on,” the Dutchwoman explains. “I haven’t made an official decision on this yet, but it has nothing to do with a partnership, because if we were to choose Ten Kate for this, they would be acting as a supplier. We will be testing an engine supplied by Yamaha’s racing department, and my team will compare the performance of both engines – as far as I’m concerned, the best supplier will be awarded the supply contract, because I want nothing but the best!”

“Nevertheless, I’d also really like to emphasise and highlight,” Corine Brandhorst concludes, “that Ten Kate was a tremendous help in completely rebuilding the team in 2024 and 2025, and that 2026 was a fantastic year – and they certainly contributed to this success, as they worked hard alongside me to lay the foundations for it. I therefore wish them all the best, but it’s simply time for us to become completely independent of them in 2027, as my team is growing and Yamaha Racing has proved to be a great strategic support for us. So I hope this puts the whole situation into perspective.”