Team HRC, Honda’s works racing outfit, will enter the FIM E-Xplorer World Cup starting in the 2024 season, which begins with the team’s home round in Osaka, Japan, Feb. 16-17.
The FIM E-Xplorer World Cup is an endurocross discipline featuring exclusively electric motocross bikes. The series therefore becomes the battleground for Honda’s CR ELECTRIC PROTO, which made an impressive competitive debut at Round 8 of the All Japan Motocross Championship at the end of last year against its established 450cc internal combustion counterparts.
Competing for Team HRC aboard the CR ELECTRIC PROTO will be four-time Italian motocross champion and three-time Italian enduro champion Francesca Nocera, who will ride alongside her duties for the Honda Racing RedMoto World Enduro Team in the Enduro World Championship, and Tosha Schareina. Having been signed to the Monster Energy Honda Team only last year, Schareina’s Dakar Rally debut as a works rider got off to a flying start with a victory on the Prologue. The Spaniard is well versed in both motocross and enduro, so alongside Nocera, the pair are strongly positioned to mount a championship assault.
Nocera and Schareina will pair up against nine other teams, each comprising a male and a female rider under the series’ regulations. New for 2024, there are two categories of competition, with the larger hyperbikes (prototype 7 kilowatt-hour-max machines using a standard motocross wheelbase) joined by a lighter-weight GT class, based upon regular production models and weighing below 112 kilograms.
Team HRC’s duo will campaign the CR ELECTRIC PROTO in the premier hyperbike class across a series of 10-minute qualifying rounds, three intense 10-minute races and a play-off series of sprint relays for the best four teams each weekend.
