Yates, May Headed To World Superbike With EBR

Paul Carruthers | December 12, 2013

Geoff May will race an EBR in the World Superbike Championship in 2014.

Photography by Brian J. Nelson
It’s official: Both Geoff May and Aaron Yates will race Team Hero EBRs in the 2014 World Superbike Championship with the team packing up and leaving the AMA Superbike Championship.

The two riders will race 2014 EBR 1190RXs for a team owned by Claudio Quintarelli and run by Giulio Bardi.

May has ridden the EBR in the AMA Superbike Series for the past two seasons and in 2012 earned a podium finish at Sonoma Raceway en route to taking fifth in the series point standings. In 2013, May ended up ninth in the series – one point behind Yates who ended up eighth in his debut season with the team.

“More than three decades of racing, engineering, and manufacturing experience goes into every EBR motorcycle” said Erik Buell in a release issued by the Dorna. “The EBR 1190RX has some very unique engineering technology, and how to optimize this for each race series is something that takes time to learn. With the winter testing ban, we will have to wait and see where we are in terms of current pace and performance. Nobody is expecting podiums, but we will be hard at work, learning and improving. We are confident EBR will bring a fun and exciting story to the series, and know the results will come.

The World Superbike Championship, meanwhile, is happy to have two American riders in the series. In 2013 there were no Americans in World Superbike.

“It is a great pleasure for World Superbike to welcome an attractive and unique brand like EBR to the series,” said WSBK Executive Director Javier Alonso. “The American manufacturer is the eighth different brand to compete in this new and challenging edition of the championship, and we are equally confident that their involvement will add to the show. Moreover, it is really good to have two American riders on the starting grid again representing a strong nationality in the history of the series.