Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

By Michael Hannas

CBR600RR Hondas will not be available in dealerships until after the upcoming races at Daytona, according to various Honda dealers across the country. The bikes were originally scheduled to be released to dealers on March 28, which would have put them on dealership floors and available for purchase around April 1. But now American Honda has notified dealers than they will receive one red unit by mid-April and one yellow unit in early May, with the balance of their ordered CBR600RRs to be delivered “from mid-May through June.”

Which means that racers planning to compete on a new Honda in either the AMA (March 5-9) or F-USA (February 26-March 2) series will be out of luck at Daytona–unless they’re one of 11 factory-supported Honda riders.

After several readers complained about the lack of CBR600RR availability in time for Daytona, Roadracingworld.com checked with several Honda dealers and then called up AMA Pro Racing National Technical Manager Rob King.

When asked if the Honda CBR600RR would be eligible to race at Daytona even though it won’t be available to the general public, King said, “Yes. The homologation procedure that has been in place for around 10 years requires that the bikes be available to the public by June 1. It used to be that the bikes had to be available in order to be raced, but it was changed since some of the manufacturers couldn’t do that. The policy has been that way for at least the past eight years that I’ve been here. Yes, it’s unfortunate for the privateer, but…”

An interesting scenario has been created here, in which an AMA racer could compete in the Supersport race at Daytona, then claim the exhaust system off Miguel DuHamel’s factory Honda for the bargain price of $650 and have a factory exhaust for his CBR600RR before he even has the bike. Also available for claiming are the fuel injection electronic control module for $750 and the ignition control module for $400, although only one successful claim per rider is allowed per season. (Since fuel injection and ignition are usually controlled by the same black box, we’re not sure if that means a combined box would cost $750 or $400 or $1150.) See the AMA Pro Racing rulebook for more details.

We also gave Formula USA’s Kevin Elliott a call. When asked the same question we asked King, Elliott said, “Yes. Our policy has always been along the lines of, ‘Well, it happens every year,’ the manufacturers just release the bikes to their factory-supported teams and everyone else gets them later. This is the first time in a long time we’ve had a problem like this, but we’ll let them run. The rules only say that the bike must be sold as a streetbike, there is no number requirement or date. With the weight and horsepower limits, the really strong existing teams like Arclight are already right at these limits, and it would be hard for a new bike to come right out and start beating them anyway. Miguel DuHamel and Doug Chandler have entered CBR600RRs in CCS events at (this coming) Daytona, but no F-USA events so far. If they do I would expect it to be in the Superbike class so they don’t have to show everyone how much power they have, since there is no horsepower limit in that class.”