Between the Races: Midori Moriwaki

Nestled in a single garage behind pit lane, the Moriwaki team gave the public at the Red Bull Indianapolis GP a glimpse of what next years Moto2 class will look like. With an exhibition ride by development rider Shogo Moriwaki on Saturday (while Kevin Schwantz rode a BQR machine), the little Japanese company highlighted the result of their hard work over the last year. We sat down with Midori Moriwaki, company managing director and daughter of owner/president Mamoru Moriwaki, in Indianapolis to discuss the motorcycle and the plans for next season.

The daughter of company owner Mamoru Moriwaki, Midori Moriwaki is the company’s managing director. – Jeff Feathers photo

RRX: Can you talk a little about the MD600 Dream and the plan for 2010?
Midori Moriwaki: Moriwaki Engineering is producing the MD600 for Moto2. We started this project in July of 2008. We brought two bikes to the Indianapolis GP—Version 5 and Version 7—which means we have already made seven different bikes for Moto2.

So you were working on this long before the exact class format was announced.
Soon after we heard that the GP250 class would be gone and there would be a new class, we thought probably four-stroke 600. We didn’t care about regulations—we wanted to make the bike, which was why we were one of the first to produce the machine last year.

How has this project progressed since the first version back in the middle of 2008?
Moriwaki was in MotoGP and from 2003 to 2005, and we had our own motorcycle the MD211V. During that time, we learned a lot from the engineering side, and the first [MD600 model] was based on the dimensions of the MD211V. But with the 600 engine [having] smaller size and less weight, we decided to do a completely new project. The first model had a steel-pipe frame, but [for] the second and third we moved to aluminum. Moriwaki and Honda have had a really good relationship for a long time, but for this project they could not support us. They didn’t design anything; everything was designed by Moriwaki, and it is our own design.

How big of an organization is Moriwaki?
It is not a big company, about thirty-six people. We have in-house design and manufacturing. We have machines and welding specialists for everything. For these bikes, everything is made in-house, by hand. We don’t use vendor companies.

How important is it for this project to be successful when it has your name on it?
[Laughs] That’s a good question. We don’t care about brand names or anything like that; when we first heard about the Moto2 project, it became very important to us. It is an important category, and that was my father’s thought. Now in MotoGP, it is extremely expensive to run, and it is impossible for a normal team to do this. Even the GP250 class is expensive, but Moto2 is like us—small manufacturers can get in with a good chassis design because the motor comes from the FIM. It is for many different smaller companies—not just the manufacturers—to come and race. Each company—like Moriwaki, Harris, and Aprilia—has their own knowledge and engineering built inside the company. It’ss good for the world level to go up and up, which is why we think it is very good.