AMA Road Racing: KTM/HMC Superbike Team Signs Taylor Knapp as Team Mate to Chris Fillmore in AMA Superbike for 2013 Season

KTM/HMC Superbike Racing's KTM RC8R superbikes sit on display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the 5th Annual Red Bull Indianapolis MotoGP in August 2012.  Chris Fillmore's #11 and Stefan Nebel's #12 adorn the KTM display that also featured many of the company's other wares throughout the weekend.

In the first full season for the team in the 2012 AMA Pro National Guard Superbike Championship Fillmore took the #11 KTM/HMC Superbike Team's machine to three top-5 finishes, two of which came at the season-ending round at New Orleans (4th/5th-place) and also managed to pull-out nine top-10s in a season that saw the former AMA Pro Vance & Hines XR1200 Series winner sit out three races due to a broken hand suffered at the Mid-Ohio round in July.  Tally all of that together and Fillmore still pulled out an 11th-place overall finish in the superbike standings.

German team mate Nebel, a former 2-Time IDM German Superbike Champion and IDM Superstock Champion, also competed in nine races with the team with two top-10 finishes.  At the end of the season, Nebel was ranked as the 17th-place rider in the overall championship standings.

After only running a handful of events in the 2011 season, the team is now geared up to run it's second full season in the series, and announced on Friday that they had signed rider Taylor Knapp to compete alongside Fillmore for the 2013 AMA Superbike Championship.  Knapp had previously competed in the superbike, supersport and Daytona SportBike classes in the previous few seasons and brings another fresh and young face to the HMC squad.

You can check out the full press release below along with some other links to what and how the KTM-based team will be moving forward for the 2013 season.


Here's the official press release from KTM/HMC Racing thanks to AMA Pro Road Racing on the signing of Taylor Knapp to the squad for the 2013 season:

http://amaproracing.com/rr/news/index.cfm?cid=55293

SpeedTV.com's Evan Williams talks about the signing in this article and the bright outlook for the team in the upcoming season:

http://moto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ama-sbk-ktm-poised-for-breakthrough-season/

AMA Pro Road Racing talked with team owner Mitch Hansen back at the end of November about the team's off-season testing and keeping rider Chris Fillmore onboard:

http://amaproracing.com/rr/news/index.cfm?cid=55258

And you can check out the KTM/HMC Racing team's link from the AMA Pro Road Racing site here:

http://amaproracing.com/rr/teams/team.cfm?tid=2283