While Pol Espargaro headed the timesheets in yesterday’s first and only day of Moto2 post season testing at Valencia and besides all the rider/team switches it also saw the debut of a new squad, “Honda Asia Team Tady”, run by the 1997 500cc World championship runner-up Tadayuki Okada.
Okada’s intentions are to put more Asian riders on the grid as their numbers have slowly dwindled over the years in favour of Spain, who seemingly has a much vaster pool of talented and nutured youngsters to chose from.
Honda Asia Team Tady will be a one-rider team and an entirely and will be using a Moriwaki chassis even though they have yet to chose a rider for the 2013 – Yuki Takahashi rode the machine yesterday as he already has experience on the machine, which over the last two years has been dropped for other chassis makers – the last Moto2 team to drop the Moriwaki was QMMF in favour of SpeedUp.
Here’s what Tady had to say:“First of all, I’m very happy and very excited to inform people about my new team “Honda Asia Team Tady”, which will be launched in 2013.
Since I had started road racing when I was 18, my dream was always to be a GP rider and be the World Champion.
I had been making effort days and days for achieving to my goal, and finally I’ve got a chance to be supported by HONDA, being a HRC factory rider, and had won 250cc All Japan Championship 3 consecutive years in ‘89, ‘90 and ‘91.
“After having won the championship three times in Japan, my ambitious had flown to World GP, and HONDA had finally given me the great opportunity to challenge for GP for the first time in ‘93 and this had changed my entire life.
Starting from the 250cc class, and later in 500cc class, unfortunately I could not win the champion during my 8 years of GP carrier but finished 2nd in 500cc in ‘97, which was the best result for Japanese rider in 500cc class, and I really had great experiences battling with the world top riders together grace of the support of HONDA.
”“Through my all the experiences of racing with HONDA including the GP and WSBK ride, team manager of British Superbike, development of MotoGP machine, and racing advisor for young riders, my next target now is to give all these my experiences to young riders who are dreaming to be motorcycle world champion like I did, give them chances to have the same experience that I had done, and challenge again to make my dream comes true together with them.
”“Being a team manager in GP is the first time experience for me, but I’ll give my best effort to make the competitive team, grow up the rider’s skill and wish to play an active role in the paddock.
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