Can a Superstock 600 beat a Moto2 bike in a race?

Bruno Gomes

March 27, 2018

For the first time ever a Superstock 600 bike won a race against Moto2 prototypes!

All over the World we find different racing series where motorbikes with the same level of specifications fight for the win at the race track. Bikes compete with other bikes in the same category, but sometimes we can see bikes from different categories or levels of tuning racing at the same time.

When that happens, and under normal circumstances, prototype bikes will have an advantage during a race against bikes derived from a production model for the road. They’ve been built specifically to race, while a production sport bike was developed to be used on the road and behave well on track.

But what happens when you put a Moto2 machine, which is basically a prototype chassis fitted with a tuned Honda CBR600RR engine, against a heavier Yamaha YZF-R6 tuned under Superstock 600 rules, which means little to no tuning at all?

You’ll probably answer that the Moto2 machine will win the race.

But that’s not what happened this past weekend at the first round of the FIM CEV Championship at the Estoril race track, Portugal.

Ivo Lopes made history in the Moto2 European Championship, considered to be one of the best race series in Europe, where many of the stars we see racing today in world level started. For example, Malyasian star Hafizh Syahrin also raced and won there before moving up to the world stage.

Portuguese rider Ivo Lopes, riding a Superstock 600 Yamaha R6, won the first race of the weekend against the better tuned Moto2 bikes, something that surprised everyone.

Even if he was only riding what is basically a stock bike, he managed to beat all the Moto2 field and did it without giving them any chance to fight back, proving that sometimes it’s not the bike that counts, it’s all the effort you put into something that will lead you to success, and of course, your own talent.

Of course, we need to take into account that the Portuguese rider knows the Estoril race track very well, after all it’s his home race, and that the asphalt was still humid because of the rain.

These factors may have influenced the outcome of the race, but the conditions where the same for everyone, so even that doesn’t hide the fact that a rider on a Superstock 600 Yamaha R6 managed to beat a field of Moto2 prototype machines for the first time ever in the Moto2 European Championship.