All the interviews I've read with Erik Buell stated that he has no immediate plans to go racing. He designs buell's to be great on the road and I haven't met a buell owner who doesn't love the shit out of them. As the designers stated intent was to make a bike that was fun to ride first and foremost as opposed to track dominating; it's an error to start benchracing with buell's in mind for this reason, they arent racing machines.
A lot of sportbikes are good on the track and good on the street but to be really good on the track it seems like there's a point where you start sacrificing street usability in exchange for track prowess.
Really seems like with the 1125R they're going in the direction of track ability and most of the mag reviews I read of it were held at tracks. Just because it can't hang with the jap and Italian makers on track doesn't mean it can't be as fun or more fun than them on track with the use of clever designs and user friendliness. Lap times aint everything!
Honestly though I don't blame Buell for holding off on getting into racing- look at how deep the market is for homolagated track specials, full to the brim of Japanese and Italian makers oozing cash and experience.
Also- to survive in the liter class they would have to undergo the penalty of displacement reduction which would be game ending as they only make 130 hp with the additional 125 cc's over I4 literbikes as is- a deficit of nearly 40 horsepower compared to the newest crop of literbikes. They could possibly get a rule exception as Ducati did in WSBK since they're running fewer cylinders.
Obviously the new engine needs some development in reliability and power to be competitive as the old guard of sportbike makers has been releasing bikes you can beat the shit out of ontrack without much additional maintenance problems for nearly 10 years now.
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