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The Harris WCM team have were excluded form the first race at Suzuka and the finally disqualified completely at Welkom. The MotoGP rules state that all machines must be ‘prototype’ machinery, and not in any way production based machines. At Welkom the FIM technical inspectors decided to crack open the cases of one of the WCM bikes; and they were suspicious at how much the cases and cylinders looked like an R-1 engine. They were also suspicious at how quickly the WCM team had managed to get a machine going that seemed to be reliable…..Proton KR have been working on their engine for ages and still don’t have it ready – how did WCM do it in 2 months? Certainly the R-1 engine was used as a basis for the engine and WCM were open about that….. but the technical inspectors did not expect to find tuning fork emblems cast into the cases, conrods and many other engine internals! WCM disqualified indefinitely and summonsed to a FIM technical meeting to explain themselves….Probably all it would’ve taken was a carefully placed grinder and they’d still be in the game!
