Unofficially, they might be doing just that with this year’s CBR954RR — getting ready to debut a 1000cc inline-four superbike next year. The days of Honda’s superbike V-Twin, the RC-51, would seem to be numbered. No more World Superbike for Honda, since the MotoGP effort seems to have sucked all the $,$$$,$$$ life out of it, and since Colin Edwards, now a MotoGP contender for Aprilia, gave them the 2002 World Superbike Championship, they might as well quit while they’re ahead.
World Superbike and AMA Superbike now permit entry of 1000cc inline fours, with some restrictions unique to each series to achieve parity with the V-twins, or some degree of it. Yoshimura Suzuki is poised to take advantage of the new rules with an appropriately modified GSX-R1000. While the official U.S. Honda factory team continues to field the RC-51, satellite teams in the U.S., supported by Honda (or Honda dealers, or both), are free to some extent (encouraged, perhaps?) to enter the current CBR-954RR in the AMA superbike class.
Doug Chandler will be on a modified CBR-954RR superbike in the Daytona 200, a race that puts a premium on the ability to generate high top speeds, over a long (for racing) distance. There also is a possibility that his Team No Limits crew will have the bike ready for other superbike races during the series. No doubt that those other race tracks will have their own distinct personalities to test various strengths and weaknesses of the 954.
Doing their development work on an inline four superbike this way will allow Honda to go after the AMA super bike title with their most highly developed motorcycle, the RC-51, while also attempting to collect the Formula Extreme championship on the 954.
Tadao Baba, the father of the CBR900, a.k.a. Fireblade series, is supposedly at work on a final version of his creation before his retirement from Honda. Given the design trend for this model, it likely will be an inline four displacing approximately 999cc with adjustability built into the chassis that usually isn’t there, as Suzuki has done, to make the bike fit with the new superbike rules.
Data collected from the satellite teams about the 954’s performance at Daytona, and other tracks in the U.S., would be very useful to Honda in its effort to manufacture a competitive four-cylinder 1000 for the AMA and WSB series.
