Sprint Filter P08 F1-85 Air Filter for WorldSBK Racing – MV Agusta F4RC (2015–2026) R189S F1-85-SBK

This is among the dearest items in the Sprint Filter motorcycle catalogue, and what an F4RC owner is paying for divides cleanly into two parts that have nothing to do with one another. One of them is the construction. The other is the cloth stretched across it. They are sold together under R189S F1-85-SBK, they can be priced separately by looking sideways at the catalogue, and an owner who separates them makes a better decision than one who reads the figure as a single lump.

Key Features

• WorldSBK construction: a framed racing assembly rather than a panel in a moulded surround
• Sprint Filter's 85 µm racing polyester, rated at 15,000 l/m²/sec
• Measured retention of 95.22 per cent of 100-micron particles
• No oil at any stage, so nothing in the medium can travel downstream
• Fits the standard airbox unmodified and needs no calibration change
• Cleaned and refitted rather than bought again; two years of warranty

Two premiums, bought in one transaction

Set this against the same WorldSBK kit carrying the ordinary road and track cloth and it asks roughly forty per cent more. That increment buys the medium, and nothing else changes between them. Set it instead against an ordinary framed element in the same racing weave, fitted to a more everyday machine, and it asks a little over twice as much. That increment buys the construction, and the medium is identical. Neither increment buys power — an insert filter does not make a standard motorcycle noticeably stronger — so both have to justify themselves some other way.

The two premiums are spent at different rates

Here is the useful part of splitting them. The construction premium is drawn on every single time the element is handled: each removal, each session with the air line, each refit into the housing. The medium premium is drawn on only while the throttle is wide open high in the rev range, and on any road-registered machine that is a small share of the hours. An owner who services often and rides hard rarely is buying mostly the first. Knowing which of the two you are actually spending is the whole decision, and it is not a decision about MV Agusta at all.

Care and cleaning

A compressor and a few minutes cover the routine. Hold the assembly, put the air on its clean face and work outward until the weave is uniform again. Where a season has left something the air cannot lift, warm water and a mild washing-up detergent will, and the rinse continues until the run-off is colourless. Then leave it standing in moving air; heat in any form, from a gun, a radiator or a flame, is the one thing that ruins polyester rather than drying it. It returns to the airbox dry and untreated. The maintenance sheet is under Downloads.

Fitment & Compatibility

Listed for the airbox of the MV Agusta F4RC 1000 from 2015 to 2026. Eight machines take the same element: the F4RC LH beside it, the earlier F4, F4R and F4RR, and the Brutale Oro, Brutale RR and Rush.