Following the development of the new Street Triple (being launched on the 10th), Triumph will be developing the engine further over the coming year after winning a contract to provide 750cc control engines for the Moto2 Championship - taking over from Honda at the end of the 2018 series.
Currently Moto2 uses the CBR600RR engine and has a contract with Honda until the end of the 2018 season, but with falling sales in the 600cc bracket, and Honda deciding not to update the engine for Euro4, there was no real possibility of providing engines past 2018. So step in Triumph with a bold offering of their race winning Daytona 675 engine updated to Euro4 specification and increased capacity. There was never any real possibility of Moto2 allowing multiple engine manufacturers, so the choice was between Kawasaki, MV Agusta, and Triumph with Triumph as the front-runner after MV Agusta proved to be too expensive.
It's not that much of a stretch of imagination to see how Triumph have achieved this scoop. The low numbers of engines is well within Triumph's capability, and they have proven themselves to be able to supply race-winning reliable engines with the Daytona 675. A small company would be far more agile in terms of developing the engine than the larger factories and Triumph fits that brilliantly too. The lack of interest in the 600cc sports class along with the need to increase capacity to deliver race-pace power whilst keeping to the Euro4 specification has almost certainly lead to the increase to around the 750cc mark... and Triumph just happen to have a suitable engine available.
It will be interesting how the Moto2 riders get to grips with the 3-cylinder engine. The first engines will be available for testing in the 2018 season. The beauty of the triple is that it isn't as wide as the four-cylinder engine, a point that had been commented on by race teams in the past, and the slimmer triple will be more suited to developing a pure racing package.
There has also been some input from T3 Racing - the company which masterminded the Triumph Triple Challenge race series - who have already developed a fire-breathing Moto2-capable supersport machine, in cooperation with Spirit of the Seventies, and Triumph, under the Spirit Motorcycles name.
The speculation now is that Triumph will be revealing a new Daytona based on the Moto2 engine in 2019. The rumours are that a number of test mule 675Rs were built in the late summer of 2016 specifically to test the new engine and that it was tested at Donington Park. It usually takes a good 5 years to develop a new bike but Triumph have almost certainly been working on it already - especially given the debut of the new Street Triple - so it is suspected that there may only be a couple more years of development left to do. So look out for announcements towards the end of 2018 or the start of 2019.
