Juggernaut
Sep 09, 2006, 3:14 PM
Mario Illien co-founder of the legendary engine building company Ilmor Engineering has unveiled plans to make a serious assault on the MotoGP World Championship in 2007 when the new 800cc regulations come into effect.
From 1995 onwards Mercedes Benz have supplied F1 engines, designed and built by Ilmor, to McLaren -with title winning success- while steadily increasing its ownership in what became "Merecedes Ilmor". Mercedes Benz recently bought out the whole company and renamed it "Mercedes Benz High Performance Engines"
However "Ilmor Engineering" has now been reborn as an independent company following the purchase of the "Special Projects Group" part of Mercedes-Ilmor by the original founders - Illien, Penske and Elizabeth Morgan ( widow of Paul Morgan who died in a plane crash in 2001)
MCN revealed that Ilmor plans to enter MotoGP in 2007 by fielding a 75 degree V4 engined bike incorporating pneumatic valves and revving to between 17,500RPM to 19,000RPM
"We will not make the same mistake as Cosworth did with Aprilia", Ilmor boss Mario Illien told MCN ," We know what it takes to build a motorcycle engine and it is all about power delivery and bottom end power.Eskil Suter whose company helped develop the ZX-RR Kawasaki MotoGP machine is building the chassis.
Illien has spent 5 Million pounds of his own money till now in the project
Mario Illien's new team of 2 Riders will take part in the 2007 MotoGP Championship backed by an intended €20 Million per year budget.
Illien, whose Ilmor engines have won two Formula 1 titles with McLaren-Mercedes and 11 Indianapolis 500 races, was comparing his operation to the Japanese factories that dominate the MotoGP grid. He has a team of 12 people working on the MotoGP project in his factory at Brixworth, Northamptonshire, where the V4 engine is being built. The company employs 60 people at the plant, and a further 52 in the USA.
"We have done three track tests, and we've had an engine running on the dyno since April," he said. "We haven't had a catastrophic failure yet, and one of the engines on the dyno has run for more than 13 hours." Illien, who was born in Switzerland, said the team has now built seven engines and two complete motorcycles. The engines are four-valve, twin-cam designs with gear-driven camshafts, and the valves are pneumatically operated. He confirmed that he is talking to grand prix veterans Alex Barros and Max Biaggi in the hope they can debut the bike at the Portuguese MotoGP on October 15 and in the final round of the season on October 29. "The bike behaves as planned or even better," he said. "We're very excited about how it works."
The race-bike produces around 210bhp at the crank and weighs 148KG
Exhaustive interview of Mario Illien on this project:
http://www.roadracerx.com/article.php?article_id=117
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1623/getimageaspku4.th.jpg (http://img341.imageshack.us/my.php?image=getimageaspku4.jpg)http://img349.imageshack.us/img349/3089/ilmorzu4.th.jpg (http://img349.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ilmorzu4.jpg)
http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/3899/ilmormotogpyh6.th.jpg (http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ilmormotogpyh6.jpg)
From 1995 onwards Mercedes Benz have supplied F1 engines, designed and built by Ilmor, to McLaren -with title winning success- while steadily increasing its ownership in what became "Merecedes Ilmor". Mercedes Benz recently bought out the whole company and renamed it "Mercedes Benz High Performance Engines"
However "Ilmor Engineering" has now been reborn as an independent company following the purchase of the "Special Projects Group" part of Mercedes-Ilmor by the original founders - Illien, Penske and Elizabeth Morgan ( widow of Paul Morgan who died in a plane crash in 2001)
MCN revealed that Ilmor plans to enter MotoGP in 2007 by fielding a 75 degree V4 engined bike incorporating pneumatic valves and revving to between 17,500RPM to 19,000RPM
"We will not make the same mistake as Cosworth did with Aprilia", Ilmor boss Mario Illien told MCN ," We know what it takes to build a motorcycle engine and it is all about power delivery and bottom end power.Eskil Suter whose company helped develop the ZX-RR Kawasaki MotoGP machine is building the chassis.
Illien has spent 5 Million pounds of his own money till now in the project
Mario Illien's new team of 2 Riders will take part in the 2007 MotoGP Championship backed by an intended €20 Million per year budget.
Illien, whose Ilmor engines have won two Formula 1 titles with McLaren-Mercedes and 11 Indianapolis 500 races, was comparing his operation to the Japanese factories that dominate the MotoGP grid. He has a team of 12 people working on the MotoGP project in his factory at Brixworth, Northamptonshire, where the V4 engine is being built. The company employs 60 people at the plant, and a further 52 in the USA.
"We have done three track tests, and we've had an engine running on the dyno since April," he said. "We haven't had a catastrophic failure yet, and one of the engines on the dyno has run for more than 13 hours." Illien, who was born in Switzerland, said the team has now built seven engines and two complete motorcycles. The engines are four-valve, twin-cam designs with gear-driven camshafts, and the valves are pneumatically operated. He confirmed that he is talking to grand prix veterans Alex Barros and Max Biaggi in the hope they can debut the bike at the Portuguese MotoGP on October 15 and in the final round of the season on October 29. "The bike behaves as planned or even better," he said. "We're very excited about how it works."
The race-bike produces around 210bhp at the crank and weighs 148KG
Exhaustive interview of Mario Illien on this project:
http://www.roadracerx.com/article.php?article_id=117
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1623/getimageaspku4.th.jpg (http://img341.imageshack.us/my.php?image=getimageaspku4.jpg)http://img349.imageshack.us/img349/3089/ilmorzu4.th.jpg (http://img349.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ilmorzu4.jpg)
http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/3899/ilmormotogpyh6.th.jpg (http://img157.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ilmormotogpyh6.jpg)