From a press release issued by FGSport:

Noriyuki Haga Makes Welcome Return to SBK with Renegade Ducati

Pre-season Update 26/01/04

Japan’s spectacular and very popular Noriyuki Haga has signed today in Rome at the FGSport headquarters with the British Renegade Ducati team and will rejoin the World Superbike Championship this year as teammate to rising U.K. star, Leon Haslam.

Haga (28), who has eleven SBK wins to his credit (third among active participants), will test his new Ducati 999 RS for the first time at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit of the Valencian Community on February 2nd and 3rd.

The signing of Haga, coming only weeks after the news that Australia’s Garry McCoy will ride for the Caracchi NCR Ducati team, means that the championship has now been bolstered by the entries of two of road racing’s most exciting riders, both world famous for their broad-sliding, tire-smoking styles and both out to challenge the defending champion Ducati Fila team of Britain’s James Toseland and France’s Regis Laconi.

Renegade is one of several new teams joining SBK for 2004, along with the World Endurance Champion Zongshen squad, entering Italian Piergiorgio Bontempi and Australian Warwick Nowland on GSX-R1000 Suzukis, and the Dutch Ten Kate Honda team, dominant in World Supersport over the last two seasons and now moving up to the Superbike class with reigning the World Supersport Champion, Australian Chris Vermeulen (22), entrusted to campaign Honda’s much-awaited and very promising CBR1000RR Fire Blade.

The start of the 2004 SBK season at Valencia on February 29th is now just five weeks away, but two weeks prior to Round One the World Superbike and World Supersports teams will converge for their final pre-season tests at Valencia on February 11-13, giving all teams an opportunity to try the latest compounds from Pirelli, exclusive supplier of tires for the World Superbike, World Supersport and European Superstock classes under the new rules intended to level the playing field for competitors.

With Haga now signed, the already strong Superbike entry list now promises an even more exciting season, the seventeenth in the history of the FIM’s premier series for 1000cc production-based machines.

Paolo Flammini, FGSport C.E.O. said: “We are delighted to welcome back Noriyuki Haga to the World Superbike. He is a Superbike symbol and we are sure he will grant the fans unmatchable emotions throughout the current and future seasons.”

Mark Griffiths, Renegade team principal added: “In Haga and Haslam I believe we have a very formidable partnership to contest the 2004 Superbike World Championship. The tyre rule enables fair competition for everyone, and we are delighted to be joining the series perhaps at the beginning of a new era for WSBK.”

Noriyuki Haga: “I am really happy to be returning to the Superbike World Championship and to be riding a Ducati for the first time in 10 years! I can promise my fans that I have not lost my exciting style and I intend to finally claim the WSBK title.”