Honda Australia has confirmed that it will return to national road racing in 2011 with the all-new Team Honda Racing effort.

Honda pulled out of the ASBK in 2009, although this year still finished 1-2-3 in the championship with private teams – the championship won by Cougar Bourbon Honda Racing’s Bryan Staring.

The Japanese marque will reunite with Motologic upon return, former racer Paul Free managing the new-look team.

Honda Australia general manager, motorcycles, Tony Hinton looks forward to campaigning a factory effort in the ASBK next season.

“Honda Australia and Paul have an outstanding history together,” Hinton commented. “We are extremely pleased to rejoin forces with Paul Free and his team. Their professionalism and experience has translated into success time and time again.

“Our joint fortunes have been well documented with five Australian Championships to our credit. We are both confident that together we can continue to be at the fore of field.”

Honda and Free have captured five national road race titles in the past, including back-to-back titles in both Australian Superbike and Supersport for 2004 and 2005, plus the 2008 Australian Superbike Championship.

After a season with Ducati in 2010, Free is excited to return to Honda for next season.

“It’s been quite a work in progress, but it’s all come together very well,” Free said. “I think we’ve got a good program in place. We haven’t got too much more to do and we’re all organised.

“Simply put, I’m happy to be back with Honda – it’s very familiar territory, and we’ll be working with an extremely strong motorcycle.

“In 2004, we won Superbike and Supersport with Adam Ferguson, 2005 we won Superbike and Supersport with Brookesy and we also won the World Supersport race with Josh [Brookes] as a wildcard rider. And then the next one was the 2008 Superbike Championship with Glenn Allerton.

“Without winning a championship, 2009 was probably our strongest season ever – we won a lot of races, qualified on pole just about everywhere, but because both Wayne [Maxwell] and Glenn [Allerton] were winning a lot of races and the two riders were taking points from each other, neither of them won the championship.

“There’s only one championship aspiration for 2011, isn’t there – that’s to win it.”

While a rider line-up is yet to be revealed for 2011, the team will make its race debut this weekend in The 6 Hour at Phillip Island with dual ASBK champion Jamie Stauffer and Allerton teamed together.

“This is earlier than planned to have Team Honda Racing running again, but if anyone can pull off a successful six-hour campaign in such a short timeframe, it’s Paul Free,” Hinton added.

“We’ve got a leading rider line-up, a very strong motorcycle and a great team – you can count on them to be contenders straight out of the box.”

Free confirmed that the team is building a brand new bike for the event, entering without testing for the weekend.

“It’s much earlier than expected doing the 6 Hour event on a Honda, so it is a lot more pressure for us to get prepared, especially for a completely different type of event, not just a normal sprint race,” Free admitted.

“We’re building a brand new bike for the event – it’s well underway and should be ready Wednesday before it goes in the truck on Thursday. We’ll only have one bike which will do practice and the race. We’ve built up a second bike that we’ll just pull apart for parts to be used if needed – hopefully they won’t need to be.

“The bike will be a one-off for this event and we’ll start with fresh bikes next year. Chassis-wise this bike will be very similar to what we’ll run next year, but there’s a lot of bits and pieces we’re working on for our 2011 bikes that aren’t quite ready yet.

“Still, for all intents and purposes, this will be a Superbike that will be capable of winning the Australian championship.

“I rate our chances very highly for this weekend. We’ve got two of the best riders in the country – very consistent and very fast riders, and with the team of people I’ve got around those two riders and the Honda product, I think we’ve got every chance to win it.”