At the top of the Italian championship with a 41-point lead and author of some brilliant moves in the Junior FIM CEV world championship, Moto3 TM took advantage of the San Marino Grand Prix to benchmark itself against the giants Honda and KTM.
The opportunity for us to discover a motorcycle of excellent quality, largely inspired by the Honda and its backwards inclined cylinders. There are even, for example, rear tire temperature sensors…
The materials, components and finish seem entirely at the level of the world championship for this motorcycle imagined 5 years ago by the small company TM born in 1976 in Pesaro which began by designing the engine.
Today, TM, best known for its off-road success, also manufactures the chassis. 8th place in Kevin Zannoni during FP2 testifies to the competitiveness of the bike tuned by Guido Cecchini, the former technical manager of Hiroshi Aoyama in 2009.
TM has the advantages and disadvantages of a small company on a human scale: if responsiveness in the design and production of parts is there, it will be technically and financially much more difficult, as required by the championship regulations of the world, to be able to provide 6 motorcycles to potential buyers.
So, Mattia Serafini, the current team manager, is not yet convinced that the rest of the adventure will involve an official arrival in the world championship: “The project will certainly move forward, both in CIV and CEV. The world championship is an idea, let's say there is a 50% chance of being among the starters at the start of the 2019 world championship.
Qualified 18th, Kevin Zannoni quickly fell in the races and was unable to carry out the work carried out a few kilometers from the circuit by a handful of Italian enthusiasts who are already almost at the level of the Japanese and Austrian engineering offices...
Kudos to them!
