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David Emmett Named Best MotoGP Blogger & Tweeter in 2013 Silverstone Media Awards

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I am very proud to announce that my good friend and colleague David Emmett (check the reflection in Nicky’s sunglasses) has been named, not once, but twice in the 2013 Silverstone Media Awards for his coverage of the MotoGP Championship and for his website MotoMatters.

For the third year in a row, David has been named the Best MotoGP Blogger, something we already knew here at Asphalt & Rubber, which is why we feature his work, and this year marks David’s first time as the series’ top account on Twitter.

David is too humble to do anything other than announce his hat-trick of trophies, but I have no problems saying that his work is the definitive source for MotoGP commentary.

David’s true journalistic ethic and keen understanding of the internet as a medium of information has quickly distinguished him from his colleagues in the MotoGP paddock, and for all the hard work of his that we read on our computer screens, there is an iceberg of change underneath MotoGP’s murky waters that he has brought about.

Keep up the excellent work my good friend, I think I speak for all the Asphalt & Rubber readers when I say that Silverstone couldn’t have recognized a better man in MotoGP.

If you want to help support David’s site MotoMatters, you can take out a subscription; get one of the stunning MotoMatters.com 2014 Motorcycle Racing Calendars; buy a print from Scott Jones’ website; or simply make a donation.

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MotoGP

Casey Stoner Will Continue His Role as a Test Rider for HRC

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Casey Stoner is to continue as test rider for Honda in 2014. The Australian double world champion will once again take the track to help develop Honda’s RC213V during the 2014 season, according to British publication MCN.

Stoner took up his role as test rider in the middle of 2013, after HRC’s regular test rider Kousuke Akiyoshi broke his femur at a Japanese Superbike round. The Australian worked on the 2013 RC213V, as well as a rain-shortened test on Honda’s RCV1000R production racer.

According to the report on MCN, Stoner’s testing schedule for 2014 has yet to be fixed. It appears that Stoner will not be present at the special tire test put on by Bridgestone at Phillip Island, which all three factory teams will attend, but he will take on further testing duties at Motegi later in the season.

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Bikes

Photos: Cyril Despres & His Yamaha YZ450F Rally Race Bike

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Yamaha Racing has officially debuted its 2014 Rally race team, which is being spearheaded by Cyril Despres, the five-time Dakar Rally winner who was formerly of KTM fame. Despres hopes to defend his latest Dakar Rally win, despite swapping orange for blue, and today is our first formal viewing of the 2014 Yamaha YZ450F Rally bike with his livery.

This year’s Dakar Rally goes through Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile and will be a longer and tougher route than in past years. With KTM debuting a now purpose-built racing machine, the KTM 450 Rally, and HRC also fielding its refined Honda CRF450 Rally, Yamaha and Despres will have their work cutout for them in defending the Frenchman’s number one plate.

Team Blue has prepared itself though, taking many inputs from Despres and incorporating them into the 2014 bike’s design. We won’t know how it will go at the Dakar Rally course until January 5th, but from the pictures we have now, it sure looks the business.

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WSBK

WSBK: Althea Racing Returns to Ducati – Will Field Niccolò Canepa with an EVO Entry in 2014

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The Althea Racing team is to switch back to Ducati from Aprilia for the 2014 World Superbike season. After their split with Ducati over development of the Panigale at the end of 2012, the Italian team are to return to the Bologna factory fold and race the Panigale in 2014.

They will do so on a different footing to their previous relationship with Ducati, however. Next season, Althea will race the Panigale 1199 R as an EVO entry in WSBK, the subclass set up to allow a more affordable entry into World Superbikes.

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Racing

Farquhar & Amor Announce Comeback for Isle of Man TT

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Much to the delight of fans Ryan Farquhar and Keith Amor have announced their return to racing, as both top riders have confirmed their entries into the 2014 Isle of Man TT under Farquhar’s KMR Kawasaki banner. This means the rivals will now race as teammates on their 650cc Kawasaki ER6 Lightweight class race bikes, as the tackle the three-lap BikeSocial.co.uk Lightweight TT Race.

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Racing

AMA Resolves Scheduling Conflict with its Mid-Ohio Round and the Laguna Seca World Superbike Round

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There are days where we truly wonder about the future of AMA Pro Road Racing. Like the rest of the motorcycle industry, America’s premier motorcycle racing series was devastated by the recession and tough economy; that is factor external to the series, and no one could fault AMA Racing for facing some challenges because of it.

However beyond the tough economy, the national-level series has perpetrated so many unforced errors upon itself that when it comes to its management, you sometimes have to wonder if there is anyone awake at the switch.

Take the latest gaffe from AMA Pro Racing: the scheduling of the Mid-Ohio round during the World Superbike weekend at Laguna Seca. We can only imagine the surprise of riders, teams, and sponsors when they realized that the recently announced Mid-Ohio round was in full-conflict with World Superbike’s stop at Laguna Seca, a round that the AMA has typically been the support class of.

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Bikes

Watch the Kawasaki J Concept Transform Itself

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The Kawasaki J Concept isn’t the first example of a leaning mutli-wheel vehicles that you ride upon, as I’m sure you have all seen the similarly themed Yamaha Tesseract by now. Neither a motorcycle, nor a quad…we would even be reluctant to call the Kawasaki J Concept a trike, as the riding experience is complete different from other three-wheelers (technically it has four wheels, though the two rear tires act as one).

As such the J Concept and Tesseract exist in a class all to themselves, and that is probably the point of these concept machines: to explore new forms of vehicle recreation and transportation.

The design as it looks now, doesn’t seem too practical, but the idea of a completely adjustable riding position sounds like a concept with some merit — a sport machine for when you want to go fast, an upright sitting position for when you want to cruise. Hmm…

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MotoGP

Schwantz v. COTA Heading to Trial in February 2014

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Last year’s Grand Prix of the Americas was marred by the dispute between Kevin Schwantz and the Circuit of the Americas, which saw the former GP Champion accusing the new MotoGP circuit of cutting him out of a deal with Dorna, the media rights holder to MotoGP.

The legal dispute has simmered since the MotoGP race, but it is unfortunately finding a new spotlight now, as a court date has been set. Scheduled February 10, 2014 as a ten-day trial, Schwantz and COTA will get to argue their claims before a jury of their peers in Austin, Texas.

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Bikes

Ducati 1199 Panigale Streetfighter by Hertrampf

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As soon as Bologna debuted the Ducati 1199 Panigale, the speculation was rife on if/when the Italian brand would bring streetfighter and supersport-class machines to market. We have already seen the Ducati 899 Panigale, which isn’t quite race-legal, though packs the superbike’s design philosophies into a more affordable package with a smaller engine displacement.

As for the Streetfighter, the debut of the Ducati Monster 1200 seems to confirm suspicions that Ducati has no plans to continue with a performance-based street naked. With the demise of the Streetfighter 1098, one can only wonder how much longer the Streetfighter 848 will remain in Ducati’s lineup. Surely when the smaller displacements of the Monster line move to water-cooled engine, the we will see the removal of the 848, much to our chagrin.

This still leaves us with some “what if’s” though, as some believe the monocoque “frameless” chassis design of the Panigale makes a streetfighter variant all but impossible. We would have to say that when the fairingless photos of the Ducati 1199 Superleggera that came out this year, our eyes searched for ways to tailor the Panigale’s naked body into some sort of Streetfighter, though it looks like some Germans have gone a step further.

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