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If the rumors that have been circulating on the Internet for days are true, everything indicates that 2019 is going to be the year of resurgence of sports motorcycles. It is often said that "when the river sounds, water carries", and it seems that there is quite a lot of noise in the channel of a segment that seemed to be quite dry in recent years.
A heavyweight on sports street bikes like the Honda CBR600RR It has been missing since 2016. Both she and the best-selling Suzuki GSX-R600 in its category were retired before the arrival of Euro 4. Now, with the impending emergence of Euro 5, the Honda CBR600RR could come back to life., although it is not entirely clear.
The to be or not to be of the Honda CBR600RR: will it arrive in 2019?
They are working at Honda. After a few years focused on the launch of heavyweights in its range such as the CRF1000L Africa Twin, CRF1000L Africa Twin Adventure Sports, X-ADV or Gold Wing among some of its most representative models, in 2019 the Japanese offensive seems to be focusing on recover the sports spirit of the brand.
With a successful MotoGP racing program with four titles in the last five years, the contrast with the World Superbike Championship is more than remarkable. Honda's last title in Superbikes was in 2007 with James Toseland at the controls of the CBR1000RR a year before the renovation of the Fireblade that has been more or less the same base of the current liter motorcycle. To make matters worse, the constructors' title of that year went to Yamaha.
With a free fall sports car market, Honda could try to regain success among Supersports with a new Euro 5-ready model.
In Supersport the story is more or less similar, although somewhat more recent. With a much more competitive motorcycle, Honda managed to win the title of riders and constructors taking advantage of the talent of Michael van der Mark in 2014, with a notable superiority together with the good performance of the Honda CBR600RR and the little fortune of Kenan Sofuoglu.
Since then, the Honda Supersport has been gradually disappearing both from the circuits and from the streets where it was once a model that reigned for decades despite strong opposition. The developments of the market have overtaken sports, but a reunion of fans with strong emotions and the need to be present in competitions would be bringing back a brand new CBR600RR.
Yamaha completely renewed the YZF-R6, Kawasaki has practically indirectly confirmed a new generation of ZX-6R and MV Agusta has the green light to update its F3 675. Now it is Honda's turn, as has been leaked in documents from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and collected by the Niews Motor medium. Seriously, these CARB folks should keep an eye on their employees because their leaks are their daily bread.
In these documents we can find the necessary data for homologation in relation to emissions for the US market. By the code designated for the chassis, the chassis would be manufactured in 2019, but it is not possible to be sure if it will be a 100% new model or if it will be an evolution of the current one for 2019 exclusively for the American market.
The encryption of the chassis and some patent images leaked during the last months, as well as information coming directly from Japan make us dream of a global return of the Honda CBR600RR, but where others claim that the Honda Supersport could have a reduction of 10 kg in its final weight we find some doubts.
In the same CARB documents the 2016 CBR600RR showed a weight of 280 kg, for 270 kg for the 2019 CBR600RR. Too heavy for a sports car, too much for the 185 kg currently declared for the Honda CBR600RR for sale in the US, something is wrong. The field where it appears is Equivalent Inertia Mass, not dry weight, nor full weight.
Normally, the CARB documents tend to be correct when it comes to the arrival of new models, the question is whether it will be an exclusive US model or will it be global.
The Equivalent Inertia Mass is a strange measure that uses the CARB in which a formula is added to the weight of the motorcycle by which a hypothetical weight of the rider is added. That is to say, that the motorcycle + rider set for the CBR600RR 2019 would be 10 kg lighter than before, but it is a data as strange as that those 280 kg are the same that appear in the documents of the CARB of the Honda CBR600RR of 2010, and in the one of 2008 … Rare, rare.
Delving further into the matter of weight, the Euro 4 regulation has made motorcycles, as a general rule, heavier by having to add a greater number of components to reduce particulate emissions. If the Honda CBR600RR wants to be a global model, it must comply with Euro 5, so a weight reduction will be even more complicated. We have already seen that the Kawasaki ZX-6R will raise its weight to about 196 kg from the 192 kg of the Euro 3 equivalent.
The last Honda CBR600RR that we could enjoy was a four cylinder Honda style, with a four cylinder in-line engine, 599 cc and 118 hp at 13,500 rpm. At Honda they have always advocated a lower weight before a greater power, so let's hope that the debate about a few kilograms of more or less is true in this case and, finally, We can see in 2019 a new Supersport CBR.
