Crankt Protein Honda Racing made headlines with the signing of Todd Waters and Luke Clout announced last Friday at Moto Expo, also confirming the addition of Jay Foreman to the organisation as team manager.

Foreman will conclude a 20-year association with Suzuki to head-up Honda’s revamped factory race team, which continues to be operated under the Melbourne-based Australian Superbike champion Motologic business of Paul Free.

It marks the end of an era of sorts for Foreman, who was involved in a technical association with Wilson Coolair Motul Suzuki this year and ran the factory Team Suzuki before that, however he’s anticipating the significant new challenge upon delivery of the 2017 Honda CRF450R.

“It’s going to be different after working with Suzuki for so long,” Foreman told MotoOnline.com.au. “But I’m looking forward to it, it’s a revolutionary new generation bike, which is going to be great to work with. I’m really happy to be working with Todd again and also Luke, who I had a lot to do with over his junior career.

“Getting involved with Paul and Motologic is really exciting. I haven’t had much to do with them so far, but the more time I spend with them, the more professional I see that they are. It’s a great new challenge for me.”

Foreman will continue to be based out of Newcastle and plans to complete much of the pre-season testing in the area, also revealing that Waters is in line to contest the New Zealand Motocross Championship in 2017 as a build-up to the Motul MX Nationals. He has also brought technical associations with Yoshimura and Hinson to the squad.

“I’ll still have my workshop in Newcastle and will probably be doing a lot of the testing from up there, as well as spending a reasonable amount of time at the team’s workshop down there as well. Luke’s based in Sydney at this stage and Todd’s in Queensland, so it’s easy for me to get together with them from Newcastle.

“We’re planning on doing the New Zealand championships with Todd for a warm-up and that way we will get a chance to race the bike a number of times, developing it over those rounds before we start our championship here following that.”