Mission Motors tweeted out something interesting just a moment ago, a link to a new website for Mission Motorcycles. Teasing there a photo of the Mission R, it would seem that the electric superbike that does competitive AMA Supersport lap times at Laguna Seca, is finally set to come to production. It seems we won’t know everything about the new Mission Motorcycles project until June 3rd, though we can speculate pretty accurately on what the A&R Bothan spy network has been telling us. Expect to see the Mission R electric superbike in street legal trim, honed even further than when we rode the machine back in August last year.
Stefan Pierer’s acquisition of Husqvarna continues to baffle me. You will note I say Pierer, and not KTM, bought Husqvarna, since the Austrian CEO used Pierer Industrie AG in the transaction as a means to help side-step European antitrust issues. After all, we can’t have Europe’s largest dirt bike manufacturer, nay largest total motorcycle manufacturer, gobbling up even more brands in the two-wheeled world. But, I digress. Developing three road bikes (Husqvarna Nuda 900, Husqvarna Strada 650, & Husqvarna Terra 650), with three more concepts waiting in the wings (Husqvarna Moab, Husqvarna Baja, & Husqvarna E-G0), it is with even more confusion that we learn that Pierer & Co. intend to kill the Husqvarna Nuda project and its other street siblings.
In case you missed the story last week, Kevin Schwantz is preparing to race in this year’s Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race. For the race, Schwantz will be riding on a team formed by Yukio Kagayama, who in addition to having raced in the MotoGP, World Superbike, and British Superbike Championships, is also a previous Suzuka 8-Hour winner with the Suzuki Endurance Race Team (also joining the three-rider team Noriyuki “Nitro” Haga). Releasing a Q&A about his team’s Suzuka 8-Hour entry, Kagayama-san walks us through how the team came together, what equipment the riders will use, and his outlook on the team’s competitiveness.
A single-cylinder hooligan-maker, the KTM 690 Duke is 330 lbs (curbside without fuel) and 67hp of two-wheeled fun, and we hope that the Austrians bring the KTM 690 Duke R our way as well. While we are on the topic of things missing from KTM’s American line-up, a decent supersport is painfully obvious, yet we can’t see the folks at KTM following the paths of other brands. That’s where our friend Luca Bar comes to mind with his latest concept: the KTM RC4. Using the KTM 690 Duke platform and its LC4 engine, Bar has designed a super-single full-fairing sport bike that takes the Austrian company’s “Ready to Race” DNA and applies it to an idea that is not all that disimilar to the Ducati Supermono.
When I sat down with Claudio Domenicali at the Ducati 1199 Panigale R launch, the now-CEO of Ducati Motor Holding was still just the General Manager of the Italian motorcycle company. Four weeks after our interview though, Gabriele del Torchio would leave Ducati for Alitalia; and Domenicali, a 21-year veteran of both the racing and production departments of Ducati, would take his place at the top of Italy’s most prestigious motorcycle brand. After reading our interview from Austin, Texas after the jump, I think you will agree too.
That Yamaha is working on a seamless gearbox is no secret, with Yamaha’s test riders currently racking up the kilometers around tracks in Japan. Recently, however, Spanish magazine SoloMoto published an article suggesting that Yamaha has already been using its new seamless gearbox since the beginning of the season. My own enquiries to check whether Yamaha was using a seamless gearbox or not always received the same answer: no, Yamaha is not using the seamless gearbox. To test this denial, I went out to the side of the track on Friday morning at Jerez to record the bikes as they went by.
After a very public father/son break-up between Paul Teutul Sr. and Paul Teutul Jr., a steroid-ring scandal involving Paul Sr., and finally a bankruptcy proceeding, it appears that Orange County Choppers is the impossible to kill multi-headed hydra of doom that we all knew it was, as the custom chopper shop is once again headed to the small screen and recruiting some talent, on and off the show. Looking for “someone who will work alongside Paul Senior, running the shop and helping build some of the best custom motorcycles in the world,” OCC says it will be back on television with a new show later this month. Please for the love of god, will someone give this man the attention he craves so dearly??! Or, just shoot us in the face.
We love us some concept bikes here at Asphalt & Rubber, and we have featured more than a few pieces of stunning design and imagination on our pages. Though, we can’t remember the last time one of these works of art were brought to us by a legitimate racing team, but that is what we have here with the Team Alstare Superbike Concept. A nod to the former Suzuki team’s return to the World Superbike Championship as the Ducati factory squad with Carlos Checa and Ayrton Badovini, Alstare has enlisted the help of designer Serge Rusak of Rusak Kreaktive Designworks to ink the shape of its futuristic Superbike concept, while Tryptik Studios handled the 3D modeling prowess.
If you didn’t watch Thursday’s pre-event press conference for MotoGP at Jerez, it is worth a viewing right to the end (assuming you have a MotoGP.com account). Building off the news about the NBA’s Jason Collins coming out as gay in a self-written feature in Sport Illustrated, my good colleague David Emmett had the courage to inquire about the culture and acceptance of the MotoGP paddock for homosexual riders. For the sake of accuracy, after the jump is a full transcript of David’s question, as put to riders Cal Crutchlow, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez, Andrea Dovizioso, Stefan Bradl, and Scott Redding, as well as those riders’ responses to David’s inquiry.
News that Suzuki plans on returning to the MotoGP Championship in 2014 should be old information for dedicated Asphalt & Rubber readers, and the Japanese company’s inline-four race bike was already spotted doing test laps last year by the eager eyes at Cycle World. Well the American print-mag has another set of eyebrow-raising high-quality photos of the 2014 Suzuki GSV-R to mull over from the Motegi race track, along with some technical insights provided by the venerable Kevin Cameron.
Holy cow!
Props to him, honestly. He did that last squeeze to keep from taking out the other rider.
I think I’d be more than a little freaked to see, and feel, a bike going past me, in the air…upside down.
Hope the bike was the only thing that was beat up.
whoa! gotta agree with jackie. seemed like the best move given the previous 500 ms although I’m not sure he knew in advance the bike wouldn’t land on him.
If I was the rider in front of him I would go visit the guy in the pits later and thank him for not crashing into me.If he had not hit that front brake a bit harder he would definately taken out the rider in front of him.Big ^^^s to the guy.Takes balls to crash on purpose instead of hitting your fellow racers.
No ABS comments? Really??!
I think that qualifies as being called “the highest side” on the scale of ending up in the dirt. Ouch.
GOOD LORD ! That was Brutal ! This guy is truly a gentleman. He totally avoided plowing the guy in front of him.
The best of wishes to The Endo Man…he surely got banged, no doubt…hope it was nothing serious but is hard to believe after seeing the footage.
HUGE BALLS….HUGE !
@Jensen:
ABS and TC would have saved his Bacon, i want to believe that.
Although i have a slight doubt that maybe, just maybe, he may have ran into the front rider because of the loose-grab-loose-grab ABS Game Pattern.
Just my best guessing.
Any one else with some real world xperience that could share some light into the matter ? (^_^)
I’m totally arm-chair racing here, but it looks like if he was in more control of his bike, i.e. rear-wheel not 3′ in the air, he could have steered around the riders.
Yeah, ABS might have enabled him to avoid the rider and run off track with some semblance of control. I’m thinking that maybe my next bike will have ABS, especially with the hindsight realization that most of my trips sliding down the pavement were the result of overestimating front-end grip under heavy braking. When braking turns into breaking, that’s always a bad thing.
Here is a better shot of the crash. Look’s eerily similar to Leon Cammier’s horror crash over the mountain at Cadwell Park…
Seems like he just misjudged it to me.
Roughly 23:45 of the video.
You have to give the guy credit. It’s rare to see and endo
at a road race. It very good of him not to crash into the
other rider and his bike.
kkkkkkkk
this is common here in Brazil…
Superbike are never thrilling, or demonstrate high level of skill.
ABS would not have saved this… ABS would have stopped his braking force to a level which would have meant rear-ending the other guy quite hard…
ABS alone would have netted the same result simply because he had traction. ABS comes into play to keep the tire from locking, and that wasn’t happening. Traction control with pitch control parameters would be required to keep the back wheel on the ground.
Most racers turn the ABS off so they have real control.Sad thing is that the guy was just going too fast and breaking too late so nothing was going to save him from overshooting the corner.If the other bike had not been there he would have just gone straight ahead and been ok.Looked like plenty of runoff room.Oh well,never mind.These things happen in the heat of competition.Next time he might pay a bit more attention to his breaking points and save himself some embarrasment,pain and money!!
2 points
1. The guy was too fast on his approach. Whichever way it could have ended nasty (credit to him for not taking out the other guy)
2. ABS can take a longer distance to stop you. No skid, but a longer distance…. I would rather take the slide risk and stop in a shorter distance.
As many of you have comment. It appears rider #20 was approaching faster than the rider in front of him. I think rider #20 crash may have been caused more by target fixation than anything. He had room to the inside which may cause him to run wide in the corner approaching but he could have made it…. Also with ABS since no wheel locked-up/skidded not sure if they would have prevented this crash.
Gerard,true the guy could have gone up the inside but then either the rider in front would have had to go straight ahead or they both would have gone down and I,m pretty sure that he wouldn,t have see the approaching bike in time so CRASH !!
Absolutely brutal. Left leg broken badly, you can see it flopping around in the full video posted above. Don’t like seeing this kind of thing, you probably should learn more about a serious crash like this before posting it with a comic headline.
pimpin