Placed right next to each other I don’t think the intake or cylinder placement moved. Externally castings of the cylinder, crankcase halves, and gearbox look identical.
I must admit it’s interesting to have this kind of dynamic. I do wonder why he left since it occurred as the merger was announced. It’s bizarre they’re led him slip out of their hands.
100% certain they did. My initial calculated guess is the powerband has been moved slightly to the left of the graph. This corroborates with the wish to also change gear ratios.
Placed right next to each other I don’t think the intake or cylinder placement moved.
You may be right. It may be the lighting playing tricks… Does it not look like the reed block is closer to the cylinder in the R3 from the side by side ?
The real question is, what’s TM look like post-Franco? and will anyone actually want to buy an LKE just because Franco went there?
Will the new Vortex look eerily similar now that OTK has taken ownership of TM?
I think it’s a lose-lose situation either way. Rhetoric that will be told as follows:
The R3 is great? Not Franco’s credit. He was sidelined for a while and did not oversee much of the developement
The R3 is not great? 100% Franco’s fault. Now that he is gone, things will be better.
I’m convinced we will see a lot of LKE’s next year, as Franco has a lot of support in the paddock and people trust him. He (and Lenzo) will push as hard as possible to spread the product around. Remember, the more people use it, the better it develops and evolves.
Also, i’m convinced the official Tony Kart race team will run TM next year. I’m puzzled as to why Robazzi actually re-homologated engines instead of just focusing on RoK and relying on TM for the race team…
Development may have commenced and engines are sat there, so may as well homologate. Only need 25 engines after all now. Also OTK abandoning Vortex totally might not be the best look. Sure, they may use TMs for the big events but a soft-transition might help protect the Vortex brand a bit. If OTK do go fully TM then you have ROK as the ‘spec’ brand arm then where does that leave ‘Vortex’.
Anyway, I just hope LKE do some giant killing. That will breathe some life into the racing for sure
It depends on the approach — if you want to do everything by the book, you need to start about 16 months before homologation to get the job done properly. However, if you’re just “upgrading” an already solid base — like from the Screamer 3 to the 4, or the R2 to the R3 — you might need less time. The foundry where we cast the crankcases is actually the same one used by all two-stroke racing manufacturers.
Interested to see where they land. I’d like some more spacing between 3th and 4th maybe even 5th. Tracks I’ve been to you just end up stuck somewhere on gearing. Too slow to pull 4th. Too fast to keep it in 3rd. Too much engine braking then when you get off throttle trying to roll speed into some corners. Then getting on power it’s just everything all at once since you’re so high in the RPM range. I’ve been doing funky gearing just to roll a series of corners better rather than tuning to revving it out in 6th at the end of a straight.
I’ve built a chart that lets me pick a gear based off of corner speeds so I can easily pick final gear ratios.
It doesn’t leave it anywhere, that’s the point. Considering this latest homologation’s performance in anything bar OK-J in 2025, it would have been possible to envision the total abandonment of the brand altogheter.
They should have done the same as Lawrence Stroll did with Newey and give Drudi a part of the company
If it results as good as the R3 people will see it as Drudi final legacy in TM. At least in my view.
If it’s the second option, then yeah, people will blame Drudi, but there will be uncertainty for the future.
Maybe there will be some LKE for this Supernats.
Yeah, though I think they do perform a bit better in Mini Gr.3. There’s a certain “““parity””” in that class from the races I have seen
The chances of the R3 engine not being competitive are pretty slim.
TM engines have been solid since day 1 and always the engine to have, it’s not easy to go from a good engine to a disaster, and most likely the R3 is not much different than the R2.
The LKE engines eventually will be developed to reach TM level performance at somepoint, i am not sure how easy is to change major parts of an engine once is been homologated, LKE might have to wait couple of years before altering major parts of their engine design.
One of these days one of you engineer wrench types will have to do an engines for dummies post that explains how these engines differ from manufacturer to manufacturer and what that means in layman’s, practical terms.
like this below.
