<\/p>\n
KALEX <\/span>| <\/span>2008-12 <\/span>| <\/span>Germany <\/span>:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Kalex Engineering gmbh, founded in 2008 in Bobingen, Bavaria, Germany, by Klaus Hirsekorn and Alex Baumgärtel, is known for designing and manufacturing high-performance motorcycle parts. Kalex began providing its chassis to the Pons Racing team in 2010 and achieved significant success in the Moto2 class, winning multiple Constructors’ Championships and Riders’ Championships….. Kalex Engineering GmbH — Bobingen, Bavaria, Germany, founded 2008 Origins and the founders Kalex Engineering was founded in 2008 in the Bavarian city of Bobingen, Germany, by Klaus Hirsekorn and Alex Baumgärtel. The name Kalex was created by merging the two first names of the founders — Klaus and Alex. Baumgärtel used to work in the car industry, at Holzer Motorsports, where he designed drivetrains and suspension for Opel DTM cars. However, he’s a motorcycle freak at heart, so around 15 years ago he started building motorcycle parts. Bobingen is a small Swabian town near Augsburg and Munich, unremarkable by any measure outside racing circles. The company began as a two-man precision engineering operation, building specialist motorcycle components, with no particular ambition towards world championship domination. That changed almost immediately when the FIM announced a fundamental restructuring of the intermediate class of Grand Prix racing. The Moto2 opportunity<\/p>\n From 2010, MotoGP’s intermediate class was redesigned. The previous 250cc two-stroke formula — a class with a long and celebrated history — was replaced by a new Moto2 category using a controlled spec engine supplied to all competitors, with prototype chassis of the teams’ and manufacturers’ own design. The spec engine philosophy was intended to reduce costs and encourage smaller constructors to participate, levelling the playing field by removing the expensive engine development arms race that had excluded many potential competitors from the 250cc era. “When the Moto2 regulations popped up, we said, ‘This is our chance — let’s invest all we’ve got,'” says Baumgärtel. The first Moto2 grid was mostly filled by established motorcycle chassis builders: garagiste enterprises like Bimota in Italy, Harris in the UK, Moriwaki from Japan and Suter from Switzerland. No one had heard of the newcomers from the small town Bobingen, near Munich.<\/p>\n In 2010, with the introduction of the new 600cc Moto2 class using controlled Honda engines, Kalex Engineering began providing its chassis to the Pons Racing team. Sito Pons — a two-time 250cc world champion — was the first team principal to recognise the promise of the Kalex design and back the unknown German newcomers with a works-level commitment. The chassis philosophy The Kalex frame is a twin-beam aluminium construction, machined from 5083 aluminium alloy. How you translate the look in a rider’s eyes into a chassis CNC’d from 5083 aluminium alloy is the key to winning motorcycle races. Baumgärtel considers the whole motorcycle to be a kind of spring. This philosophical approach — treating the frame not as a rigid structure but as a carefully tuned flexible member that mediates the relationship between rider, tyre, and road — is the conceptual foundation of Kalex’s engineering.<\/p>\n The company established itself as a leader through innovative aluminium frame designs that emphasise flexibility and tyre contact optimisation. In principle, it’s a technology with which I’m relatively flexible. I believe that steel reacts very receptively, especially when working with flex. The tolerances are naturally more sensitive, simply because the elasticity module is almost two and a half times higher. This also makes you more sensitive to the geometry, Baumgärtel explained when discussing the aluminium-versus-steel debate in MotoGP. The Kalex approach accepts that aluminium requires greater precision in geometry but rewards that precision with a more predictable and tuneable flex characteristic. A Kalex chassis is just 1.2mm thick at some points — so thin it pings like a cola can when tapped — yet it is engineered to withstand the forces of Grand Prix competition across a full season.<\/p>\n 2011: the first championship The pace of Kalex’s rise was extraordinary. In just its second year of competition, Stefan Bradl became the first rider to achieve a world title using a Kalex chassis when he won the 2011 Moto2 World Championship for the Viessmann Kiefer Racing team. Bradl — a German rider from a motorcycling family — gave Kalex its breakthrough result, establishing the Bobingen company as a credible championship contender against the more established Suter chassis that had taken the inaugural 2010 Moto2 crown. 2012 onwards: escalating dominance.<\/p>\n From 2012 the Kalex chassis began accumulating Constructors’ Championship titles. Kalex won the Manufacturers’ Championship in 2013 when teams using their chassis finished in the top four places in the Championship. What followed was the most sustained period of dominance by a single chassis constructor in the history of Grand Prix motorcycle racing. Kalex engineering from Bobingen has won eleven constructors’ titles in a row since 2013, with Pedro Acosta the twelfth world champion since Stefan Bradl in 2011. Kalex even remained unbeaten in the 2016, 2020 and 2021 Moto2 seasons. The full roll of Riders’ World Champions on Kalex chassis: Stefan Bradl in 2011, Pol Espargaró in 2013, Tito Rabat in 2014, Johann Zarco in 2015 and 2016, Franco Morbidelli in 2017, Francesco Bagnaia in 2018, Álex Márquez in 2019, Enea Bastianini in 2020, Remy Gardner in 2021, Augusto Fernández in 2022, Pedro Acosta in 2023.<\/p>\n In 2024, Italian chassis builder Boscoscuro interrupted the riders’ title run when Ai Ogura clinched the championship, though Kalex still secured the constructors’ crown. Kalex secured the Riders’ Championship again in 2025 with Diogo Moreira, giving the company 13 Riders’ titles in the 16-year history of the Moto2 class. In 2015, Kalex riders won all but one race and took the top three places and nine of the top ten places in the overall standings. Riders using the Kalex chassis dominated the 2016 season, winning all 18 rounds and taking the top nine positions in the season final standings. Kalex has won more GP victories over the last ten years than Ducati, Suzuki and Yamaha combined.<\/p>\n By the end of the 2024 season, Kalex chassis had amassed 187 Grand Prix wins. The riders Kalex made The list of future MotoGP stars who developed their championship-winning craft aboard Kalex machinery reads like a who’s who of the premier class in the 2020s. Over this period Kalex has won more than 160 Moto2 races with around 40 different riders, including current MotoGP men Pecco Bagnaia, Enea Bastianini, Marco Bezzecchi, Bradl, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Pol Espargaró, Augusto Fernandez, Raul Fernandez, Jonas Folger, Luca Marini, Álex Márquez, Jorge Martin, Franky Morbidelli, Nakagami, Álex Rins, Maverick Viñales and Johann Zarco. Of those, Bagnaia became MotoGP world champion in 2022 and 2023; Jorge Martin won the 2024 MotoGP title; and Bastianini, Morbidelli, Zarco, Espargaró and others have taken race wins at the highest level of the sport.<\/p>\n Despite this dominance, Kalex remained a tiny operation throughout its most successful years. Kalex employs nine people in total. Nine engineers and technical staff producing the chassis that the majority of the Moto2 grid depends upon is one of the more remarkable facts in modern motorsport — a reminder that focused engineering expertise and a clear philosophical vision can outperform vastly larger organisations. In 2019 the Moto2 class changed its spec engine supplier from Honda to Triumph, with Kalex adapting its chassis design to accommodate the new 765cc triple.<\/p>\n Following the change to Moto2 engine supply by Triumph, older Kalex chassis designs continued to be used in the British GP2 classification, run within the British Supersport Championship from 2018. Moto3 and MotoGP involvement Kalex’s activities have extended beyond Moto2. The company has also raced in Moto3 in the past, winning several GP races with Luis Salom and Jonas Folger. More significantly, co-founder Alex Baumgärtel worked as a technical consultant with Honda Racing Corporation and developed chassis and swingarms for the RC213V between 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n This was a remarkable collaboration — the world’s most successful chassis manufacturer in the intermediate class directly contributing to the MotoGP effort of one of racing’s great factory teams. The German engineering company even worked with Honda to help build swingarms for the brand’s MotoGP team in 2022 and its chassis in 2023.<\/p>\n The CFMoto acquisition, 2025 – CFMoto has acquired a majority stake in Kalex. The Chinese manufacturer has acquired a 51 per cent stake in the German engineering company. The acquisition was made through CFMoto’s subsidiary Helmsmen Europe and means the company will now be co-led by CFMoto Vice President Zhiyong Chen and Sebastian Sekira, who previously led engine development at KTM. Kalex co-founders Alex Baumgärtel and Klaus Hirsekorn split the remaining 49 per cent not owned by CFMoto equally. Although the sale was completed back in December 2025, it only became public at the Thailand Grand Prix in March 2026. Alex Baumgärtel remains managing director, the development team in Bobingen stays intact. “We’re not planning any revolution,” Baumgärtel reportedly told close associates. “CFMoto gives us financial security — that’s what matters.” Kalex currently supplies chassis to 20 of the 28 riders on the 2026 Moto2 grid. The acquisition aligns with CFMoto’s ambitions in the world championship, including plans for a new Moto3 class set to debut in 2028 featuring identical bikes for all riders, and longer-term aspirations towards MotoGP.<\/p>\n What Kalex has achieved from a nine-person workshop in a small Swabian town defies the conventional logic of motorsport, where success is assumed to correlate with scale, factory resources, and corporate backing. The company has won twelve constructors’ titles in a row from 2013, and produced twelve world champions since Stefan Bradl in 2011. It has done so while remaining the smallest chassis constructor on the Moto2 grid — a testament to the clarity of Baumgärtel and Hirsekorn’s engineering philosophy and to the willingness of rider after rider to trust a frame built in Bavaria by a team smaller than many racing club workshops. The riders who have graduated from Kalex machinery to the podiums of MotoGP represent perhaps the most lasting contribution: Francesco Bagnaia, Jorge Martin, Enea Bastianini, Álex Márquez, Johann Zarco, Franco Morbidelli, Maverick Viñales — a generation of MotoGP stars who learned to win on a Kalex.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KALEX\u00a0 |\u00a0 2008-12\u00a0 |\u00a0 Germany\u00a0 : Kalex Engineering gmbh, founded in 2008 in Bobingen, Bavaria, Germany, by Klaus Hirsekorn and Alex Baumg\u00e4rtel, is known for designing and manufacturing high-performance motorcycle parts. Kalex began providing its chassis to the Pons<\/p>\n