Forward Racing plan to continue developing own chassis

Forward Racing will continue to develop its own chassis for 2015, despite admitting it is unlikely to race any frame other than the factory-spec version supplied by Yamaha next season.

The Italian-based squad signed a new contract to run Yamaha’s Open class YZR-M1 again in 2015 at the Motorland Aragon recently.

And after a major strategic change first revealed by MCN, Yamaha will continue to supply Forward Racing with an engine, chassis and swingarm for 2015, having initially intended to supply a YZR-M1 motor package.

Forward Racing has two options now with Yamaha. They can continue to run the Yamaha chassis they have been running in 2014, which is a 2013-spec YZR-M1 frame. Or they can purchase this year’s prototype YZR-M1 chassis to be raced next season.

New signing Stefan Bradl seems certain to have three different frames at his disposal when he makes his Forward Racing debut in next month’s post race test in Valencia.

Cuzari told MCN: “We can remain with our current Yamaha chassis or in Valencia we will receive the new frame, so we will have both. But we can choose from three options, which are the Yamaha 2013 frame, Yamaha 2014 or our own Forward chassis.”

The Forward chassis, which is currently being raced by Alex de Angelis, was designed by ex-FTR frame specialist Mark Taylor and built by Harris Performance in the UK.
Forward won’t shelve that project and Cuzari added: “We will continue with our small project to see what happens. Firstly we will use the material from Yamaha because they give us a good opportunity and the race bikes next year will be Yamahas.  We know it is impossible to go against 100 engineers from Yamaha in Japan but we want to be ready if something happens and we need our own chassis.”