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Segway Returns to Sponsor MotoCzysz for 2012

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For 2012, Segway returns as the title sponsor for MotoCzysz’s electric motorcycle racing program, with the team’s first race set to be the TT Zero event at the Isle of Man TT. Continuing the special sauce that lead MotoCzysz to a 1-2 victory at the Isle, Segway Racing hopes to be the first and fastest team to crack the 100 mph average lap speed barrier for electrics on the Mountain Course.

Rumored to be bringing another all-new 2012 MotoCzysz E1pc to the iconic road race, MotoCzysz’s biggest competition will come from a now more-developed Lightning “Flying Banana” and wild card Honda Mugen Shinden. Further entrant announcements are still expected as well.

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News

Who Wore It Best? Del Rosario Calls Out the AGV PistaGP

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While we are excited and anxiously awaiting the AGV PistaGP helmet, one American helmet manufacturer is less-than-thrilled with the Italian company’s latest offering: Del Rosario. A small boutique firm based out of New York, Del Rosario’s aim was to bring to market helmet designs that were “caught up to the rest of the industry.” Showing off a number of CAD renders since its inception, Del Rosario has clearly missed its late-2011 shipping date, and as far as we can tell, has not actually produced any physical prototypes or finished models.

Getting a fair bit of press and then falling off the radar, Del Rosario is back in the limelight as the company sent a worded warning to AGV through its corporate Facebook page. According to a message posted by Del Rosario on its social media portal, one of the company’s former advisors showed AGV Del Rosario’s stylebook, and now three years later the PistaGP has emerged with a shell design that has some obviously similar characteristics to Del Rosario’s renders.

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Bikes

KTM 690 Duke “Track”

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Perhaps the only thing we don’t like about the 2012 KTM 690 Duke is the fact that the big Austrian thumper won’t be coming to the United States. Not quite sure how to exist outside of the off-road market here in North America, KTM’s street bike offerings are giving Hansel & Gretel a run for their money in the “worst sense of direction” category (we take that back, clearly Moto Guzzi is having a tougher time of it).

Despite our domestic suffering, our European brothers-in-petrol not only get to enjoy the hooligan machine that is the Duke 690 on the street, but KTM has managed to get the single-cylinder machine as the bike of choice for the European Junior Cup, a young-rider grooming series for racers 14 to 19 years of age.

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News

Yamaha’s 180hp Adventure Bike is Our Kind of Crazy

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When you think of the ultimate adventure bike, your first thoughts probably lean more towards bikes like the class-leading BMW R1200GS. If we continue that thought, and said that the ultimate ADV machine was in fact a Yamaha, you would of course then expect to see the subsequent words to center around the Yamaha Super Ténéré (read our review of the Yamaha Super Ténéré here).

Well, someone in Yamaha’s French office is our flavor of crazy, as they let six-time Dakar Rally winner Stephane Peterhansel loose in the sand dunes of Merzouga, Morocco on a Yamaha YZF-R1. Shod with exquisitely hand-cut Michelin tires, Peterhansel flexes the 180bhp machine over the dunes with proper rallying style.

Truly gorgeous shots, if it is available in your area, you’ll want to pick up the latest copy of L’Intégral magazine to see them in the gloss and read Peterhansel’s thoughts on riding the R1 in its non-native habitat.

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Products

AGV PistaGP Helmet – The Next Generation Helmet

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Today at the MotoGP test in Jerez, AGV debuted its next-generation helmet: the AGV PistaGP. The fruits of the Italian company’s Project 46, the PistaGP is the first helmet to come from AGV’s new AGV Standards program, which seeks create products with an inside-out approach. You have likely already seen Valentino Rossi testing the AGV PistaGP in the recent Sepang tests, and I have already waxed poetic about how excited I am about this product.

Generally I am not a big fan of AGV sport bike helmets (though I do have a torrid love affair with the AGV AX-8 Dual Sport helmet), as I find the field-of-view (FOV) on AGV lids to be far too limited for my riding tastes, but the PistaGP promises a host of improvements to AGV’s helmet design, especially an improved FOV, which should allay my complaints. For AGV, the company hopes the PistaGP, and its progeny from the AGV Standards program, will reposition the helmet manufacturer once again as again the pinnacle maker of motorcycle helmets.

Releasing details on the PistaGP to the assembled GP paddock press at Jerez, we can finally publicly talk about this new lid and AGV’s new approach to designing motorcycle helmets. Details after the jump, along with more photos than you can shake a stick at.

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Bikes

LCR Honda RC213V Makes Its Debut

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LCR Honda may only be a satellite Honda team in MotoGP, but everything Lucio Cecchinello touches regarding the squad has an amazing attention to detail, and the teams’s 2012 launch is no different. After a disappointing last season with Toni Elias, LCR Honda has swapped in another Moto2 Champion, this time with German Stefan Bradl at the helm of the LCR Honda RC213V. Already showing tremendous progress in the big show, Bradl is an early favorite for the Rookie of the Year distinction, and the 22-year-old is certain to give some of the more veteran riders a run for their money this season.

Officially launching the 2012 LCR Honda squad in Jerez this week, the Italian MotoGP team always brings us some of the most artful studio shots from the paddock launches, and again Lucio and his crew don’t disappoint in this regard. If you like your photos warmed up and desaturated, we have got a treat for you, but sorry…no bunnies this time around.

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Bikes

Ducati 798 Desmosport R Concept by Oberdan Bezzi

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Much has been speculated about the alleged Ducati 799 Superbike that surely is being planned in Borgo Panigale this very minute. Connecting the dots with the Italian company’s product roadmap, Ducati surely has a smaller-displacement version of its 1199 Panigale in the works, though what it will be called and what displacement it will use is still the subject of much conjecture. Today Oberdan Bezzi takes us back down that thought process with his Ducati 798 Desmosport R concept.

A supersport-market model, Bezzi’s focus is not with the water-cooled 1,200cc Superquadro motor, but the tried and true DesmoDue air-cooled lump currently found in the Hypermotard and Monster lines. Looking for a €9,000 price point, 100hp power figure, and 365 lbs dry weight, Oberdan Bezzi is striking the same vein that Radical Ducati and NCR have been touching on for the past few years, albeit at different ends of the price spectrum.

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Racing

2012 Yamaha YZR-M1 Breaks Cover at Jerez

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Light on sponsors, but heavy on style, the 2012 Yamaha YZR-M1 broke cover today at the Jerez. The 1,000cc inline four-cylinder machine will catapult factory riders Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies, as well as satellite riders Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow on the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 squad, as they attempt to overturn the Honda supremacy of last season.

With more than 240hp at the crank, there can be little doubt that the new M1 will be blisteringly quick, and 220+ mph speed trap times are already being pondered for fast tracks like Mugello. Called the best bike in the paddock by Repsol Honda boss Shuhei Nakamoto, the tuning-fork brand seems set to give Casey Stoner and HRC a run for their money in their Championship defences. Photos and technical specifications after the jump.

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Racing

John McGuinness Tests the Mugen Shinden Electric Bike

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Right after it was made official that John McGuinness would race in the 2012 TT Zero on the Mugen Shinden, the 17-time Isle of Man TT race winner was whisked off to Motegi to test the electric superbike. McGuinness’s involvement with Mugen’s racing effort has only added further credence to the notion that the team is a front for Honda’s foray into full-size electric motorcycles (Mugen was also started by Hirotoshi Honda, the son to Honda founder Soichiro Honda).

Debuting the Honda RC-E concept last year, A&R has also heard reports that the Japanese OEM has been playing with electric motorcycles in various forms for almost a decade now. Despite continued reports that the Mugen Shinden is a rebadged Honda RC-E, the two bikes share almost no similarities, except of course for this whole running on electricity thing.

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News

Photos: Underneath the Ducati 1199 Panigale’s Fairings

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We have shown pornography CAD renders of the Ducati 1199 Panigale sans fairings before, and immediately heard office doors around the nation close shut while trousers were ruined. Showing off its frameless chassis design, the Ducati 1199 Panigale is perhaps one of the most intriguing motorcycles to see without its bodywork.

Perhaps losing some the elegance of previous Ducati models when naked, there is very little free room between the Panigale’s 1437mm (56.6in) wheelbase. With the Tetris-style fitting of pieces together into the Panigale’s monocoque frame, there can be little speculation as to why the 1199 features such a large and comprehensive fairing.

That being said, when the Ducati 1199 Panigale is in the buff, it makes for some good art. But just remember: every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten. Please remember the kittens as you click through to the full-size photos after the jump.

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Racing

Aspar Racing’s Aprilia-Designed CRT MotoGP Bike

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One of the biggest compliments ever made regarding the Aprilia RSV4 was actual meant to be a criticism, as when it came time to homologate the RSV4 for World Superbike racing, the competition cried afoul — saying the RSV4 Factory was really a MotoGP bike in a production bike’s clothing. Said to be the leftovers from Aprilia’s aborted MotoGP effort, the Aprilia RSV4 had a meteoric rise in WSBK, and won the Championship after only the company’s second season back in the series.

It should come then with little surprise that the Aprilia and its V4 motor has been the popular choice for teams in the MotoGP Championship looking for a claiming-rule team (CRT) solution. Dubbed the ART, the Aprilia-powered CRT bike also features an aluminum chassis that is designed by the Italian company. Thus with Aprilia offering essentially a turn-key GP solution for teams like Aspar Racing, it probably shouldn’t shock us that the similarities between the production WSBK-spec RSV4 and prototype ART being almost too close to distinguish between the two, even down to the bodywork.

Given the fact that Dorna desperately needs an alternative to prototype racing machines built by Ducati, Honda, and Yamaha for its CRT gamble to work — not to mention the need for CRT bikes and teams that are competitive on the track with the bikes from the OEMs — one can only imagine that Dorna is turning a blind eye to obvious “bending of the rules” that is occurring with the ART project. If the ends justify the means, then surely none of this matters to Ezpeleta et al, and right now Randy de Puniet and the Aspar Racing team’s CRT effort are the MotoGP rights holder’s best bet at recapturing control of MotoGP racing.

That all being said, the Power Electronics Aspar team debuted its ART race bike, and as is the custom, disclosed only some of the most basic technical specifications about the machine. At the helm of Aspar’s ARTs will be Randy de Puniet and Aleix Espargaro, and while the CRTs as a whole have been off the pace of the prototype bikes, RdP’s pace on the Aprilia has been noticeably quicker, and could give some of the slower satellite riders a run for their money. Technical details and photos are after the jump.

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