As most of you will have seen there is some controversy surrounding the use of the 2015 EVO engines and upgrades in South Africa. We regret the confusion and assure you that we will continue to work with MSA to resolve this as quickly as possible. In the meantime perhaps a little background and explanation of how this works will help everyone understand our position.
Rotax is an exceptional manufacturer in the karting world with a proper warrantee system, well organized sporting and technical regulations each year and continuous product improvement. The market is carefully surveyed, the warrantee claims also provide valuable feedback and from time to time changes are made to cut the costs and improve your enjoyment. Changes are always carefully tested and the timing of the introduction is done in a well-planned fashion. Unfortunately very little notice of running changes is possible in the real world for many reasons and so this is only made public at the end of the year. For South Africa this is especially difficult as racing starts in January – months before most countries who are still in winter!
As one can imagine BRP is a serious organization with distributors, service centres and dealers throughout the world. In order to ensure consistent supply and quality service there are systems that need to be followed by distributers such as Ed Murray Racing and for example the distributors need to order engines (for each class) more than a year in advance. This is a serious commitment and if the distributor forecasts too little they cannot supply – too much and the distributor sits with stock on the shelf.
We were informed of the upgrades and given a once off opportunity to increase our engine orders for December 2014 and January 2015 which we did. Convinced of the technical merit of the EVO system and affordability of the parts we also ordered a large quantity of upgrade kits and components to ensure that we could supply everyone that wanted a new engine or to upgrade. By now most of you know that the old engines are 100% upgradable and also what our special offers on upgrade parts are. The upgrade is optional but for us it was clear – the rest of the world is going this way and no company will produce small quantities of old model engines or parts. Delaying the introduction will mean that you lose out the very special prices being offered until the end of May 2015. We will soon be unable to supply the 2014 components.
We have received the first shipment of 2015 EVO engines and these are sold. We will receive a large shipment of upgrade components in week 4, the next shipment of engines in week 5 (last week of January 2015) and we believe that everyone that wants a new engine or upgrade part of any description should be satisfied.
Thank you for your support and Happy MAXing in 2015!
About BRP Rotax
BRP Rotax is a multinational company that produces a wide variety of small engines ranging from kart engines to small aircraft engines, micro lites, BMW motorcycle engines, Seadoo, Skidoo, Johnson, Evenrude etc. BRP Rotax started the Max challenge in 1999 and this series has become absolutely dominant in the world of karting with Nationals in more than 60 countries, Euro Challenge, etc. and the most prestigious RMCGF which has been held on six continents. Arguably the most popular form of motorsport today!