The Spanish team Provec Racing has represented Kawasaki in the Superbike world championship for 7 years.
After winning four world driver titles, one with Tom Sykes (2013) and three thanks to Jonathan Rea (2015, 2016 and 2017), as well as four constructors' titles, the team knows the discipline perfectly.
It is run by the brothers Gim et Biel Roda and their cousin Alvar Garrigaun, and has an annual budget of around seven million euros, five of which come from Kawasaki, in motorcycles, equipment and pilots' salaries, and two are provided by sponsors.
After the last tests in Jerez, where the Kawasaki compete more or less with the MotoGP, Biel Roda, marketing manager and co-owner of the team, explains on the site Green Box why the Kawasaki factory favors Superbike instead of MotoGP…
“For a season in MotoGP, we would need at least 45 million euros. There are teams that spend a lot more, but these are approximate numbers because there is an engineering part that is difficult to quantify. Technically, in MotoGP you can make a lot more changes and you can't start from a production bike like in Superbike. For example at the chassis level, based on what a test team can decide, a chassis is ordered from an external consultant. In Superbike, this is not possible. The same thing happens with engines. They can work with different configurations, angles, electronics etc. They also have the possibility of doing wind tunnels.
We have nothing to envy of MotoGP. In Superbike, you can be in a more economical structure and work on a project for which the factory, in this case Kawasaki, will be able to sell thousands of units of a motorcycle like ours. This doesn't happen in MotoGP. »
But in terms of marketing and impact, without a doubt and especially in Spain, MotoGP is far superior to Superbike…
“In Italy, on Saturday and Sunday, the races are watched by more than a million viewers, 900 in a bad race, in Spain 000 in a good race. »
According to the Spaniard, Superbike spectators are different from those of MotoGP…
“We are aimed at everyone who wants to buy a Kawasaki. MotoGP has a lot of different aspects, like the fact that a 60-year-old lady knows Marc Márquez or Valentino Rossi. This doesn't happen in Superbike. In the case of MotoGP, a company like Movistar invests so that the public can buy a TV show while the Superbike public buys a Kawasaki. The 60-year-old woman who meets Rossi is not a target audience for Kawasaki. And this also happens with our sponsors, with Akrapovic or Motocard. They are companies specialized in the world of motorcycles that reach the user thanks to a team like ours. »
