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.
A surprise addition to BMW Motorrad’s 2013 model line-up, zie Germans have announced a new middleweight adventure-tourer, the 2013 BMW F800GS Adventure. Like its larger predecessor, the BMW F800GS Adventure is a more travel-ready and off-road capable build of the recently updated BMW F800GS motorcycle. Featuring a larger windscreen, panniers, and a bigger fuel tank capacity (2.1 gallons larger, for a total of 6.3 gallons of fuel), the BMW F800GS Adventure keeps the same 85 hp, liquid-cooled, 798cc, parallel-twin engine found on the F800GS, as well as the same chassis configuration. Pricing in the US will be $13,550 for the base model BWM F800GS Adventure.
Former 500cc World Champion Kevin Schwantz has certainly been in the news a bit these past few months, mostly for his involvement and falling out with the Circuit of the Americas and the Americas GP, but also more recently for his comments regarding Dani Pedrosa — we also sat down with Mr. Schwantz in Austin, and the Texan gave us some sobering insight into the future of American road racing. As if all that wasn’t enough, Schwantz is making a return to two-wheeled racing, and has entered the prestigious Suzuka 8-Hours endurance race with Team Kagayama racing alongside Noriyuki Haga and team owner Yukio Kagayama.
Well the swingarm is pretty cool looking.
Can I buy one? and how much?
Price?
and, any bets as to how long before someone shoe-horns a 450 motor into that frame?
well,honda, maybe i’d love it and be charmed if your latest 250 street bike wasn’t a 359 lb porker. why can’t you build a 250 street bike under 300 lbs?
flyboy2160 says:
“well,honda, maybe i’d love it and be charmed if your latest 250 street bike wasn’t a 359 lb porker. why can’t you build a 250 street bike under 300 lbs?”
+1
That bike shouldn’t be more than 300lbs curb weight. Sell a detuned version of this bike with some mirrors and lights. I’m not at all interested in that ugly cow called the CBR250R.
@flyboy2160: 125 kg for me is the max, wet but without fuel.
HONDA…Just dump the CBR250R all togheter and use this as it’s direct replacement. Keep the ABS optional again.
OK, dump the CB250R altogether, and sell these instead.
Let’s see, chock full of race-spec HRC unobtanium parts, then make it street legal, and keep ABS. No problem, American Honda should sell a boatload of these at 25-30 grand a pop for a 250 that will get taken to the woodshed by a Triumph Bonneville. Did you hear about the maintenance schedule, and the HRC parts prices?
OK, let me show you something in a nice, used RCV . . . .
It looks like the out going RS250 only it’s heavier and slower. Still I wouldn’t mind having one.
Ok,Ok…I realize is not Mix and Bake kind of easy but danm, is just that that P.O.S CBR250R is so dissapointing compared to something like this that i couldn’t help myself but to ask for the impossible…lol.
Well, the trend seems the industry has no trust in those lame 125 fourstrokes anymore and
is defenitly going for 250cc fourstroke as a ‘beginners’ class. I am very curious what
Yamaha and/or Aprilia are planning. Would love to have an Aprilia RSV 550 or
RS4 250 ….
Have had Aprilia RS 125′s and 250′ for over 15 years now, finally got bored with
them and bought me a Kawasaki Ninja 250r as a temperary solution. The Ninja
is 30 kg too heavy, the handlebars are too high and it is more like a sports-tourer.
I totally agree. An RS4 250 would be awesome. I think Aprilia would sell a lot more if it was a 250.
The problem is that people would rather buy an average 250 (the Ninja 250 and CBR250) than a superb 125.
Solution? Bring a RS4 250 to North America. Lighter, sportier, higher quality, better looking, exotic. People would pay a little more for that bike over the Japanese options, but hardly anyone would buy the 125 version.
Announce the 250 version and i’ll put a deposit the next day.
Hey everybody i just set up a facebook page to get Aprilia to make a 250cc version of the RS4 125. Sign up :)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/RS4-250-Make-it-happen-Aprilia/156593214394791
That’s probably the closest thing you’ll get to a street legal moto3 bike.
What I really think would hit just where you guys are thinking would be a 250 chassis / 450 motor piece along the lines of the proposed racing series that never got off the ground. Those 450 motocross motors are high output/ high maintenance, but way below what ‘street-ified’ pure race pieces would entail.
Hell, I’d could see a 250Ninja with a Kawi motor transplant from the Ninja 400 . . . or what the hell, just sell the Kawasaki Nija 400 here, since it’s already in Canada !
http://www.kawasaki.ca/model/Street-Touring/1256/Ninja-400R
“Announce the 250 version and i’ll put a deposit the next day.”
Me too :-)
“or what the hell, just sell the Kawasaki Nija 400 here, since it’s already in Canada !”
The 400 Ninja uses the much heavier frame of the 650 ….
Look at the new Honda #bike in it's unshaded state. Looking a bit like something from the iRobot film http://tinyurl.com/6aqxnsr