Mahindra to enter 125cc MotoGP with own team

Come the opening round of the 2011 World Championship MotoGP season and auto major Mahindra & Mahindra will embark upon a path never tread by any Indian corporate in the world of motorcycle road racing. Mahindra will enter the 125cc class of the MotoGP world championships with its very own team.

The World MotoGP Championship is the blue riband of motorcycle sport, akin to what F1 means to four-wheelers. While Mahindra has entered the vibrant Indian motorcycle market, first by buying over Kinetic and then adding its very own 110cc commuter motorcycle to its small but ever expanding range, the bigger potential is what Mahindra has overseas. Its acquisition of Italian specialist engineering firm Engines Engineering a couple of years ago is key, not just for its motorcycle ambitions in India but also its key engineering skills base across its automotive brands. Engines Engineering has been very active in the sport, having made racing machines and also specialized components for some of the world`s best known racing teams.

Technology is key driver for this move into the sport and an application has been made to the World MotoGP Championship series promoter Dorna for an entry in the 125cc class for 2011. It is expected that the team will be known as Mahindra and it will enter a team of two riders in the 2011 season. The bikes, the riders and the team management would be made up of specialists from within Mahindra & Mahindra and the team would be based at Engines Engineering facility in Italy.

Speaking of rivals, Mahindra can expect to face entrenched bike makers like Piaggio subsidiaries Gilera and Derbi and the dominant class leader, Aprilia. Group companies like Mahindra`s Engineering Services Division, its IT divisions, Systech specialist auto components division and also of course Mahindra 2Wheelers would all be involved in this unique exercise which is without parallel in the Indian automotive industry. The World MotoGP Championship is also the one which is beamed across the globe, just as F1 is, and it closely follows F1 in the audience it caters to.

The 2011 season will be the last for the 125cc two-stroke class for in 2012 this class changes to the Moto3 category for four-stroke motorcycles and this would also be a good test bed for the firm to perfect its approach to small capacity mass-produced bikes which are penciled into the Mahindra product range around the same time. Factor in the fact that there would be an Indian MotoGP Grand Prix in 2012 at the Jaypee circuit in Noida, this Mahindra move may be coincidental but it dovetails well in the overall scheme of things.