Q&A: Yukio Kagayama Talks About the Upcoming Suzuka 8-Hour with Kevin Schwantz & Noriyuki Haga

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.

KTM RC4 Concept by Luca Bar Design

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.

Q&A: Claudio Domenicali Talks Frameless Chassis, Sacred Cows, & The Future for Ducati

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.

Is Yamaha Using A Seamless Gearbox? The Data Says No

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.

OCC Coming Back to TV? — Universe Collapses in on Self

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.

Alstare Superbike Concept by Team Alstare

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.

Transcript: The Gay Question at Jerez

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.

2014 Suzuki GSV-R Spotted Again

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.

BMW F800GS Adventure – Germany’s Middleweight ADV

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.

Kevin Schwantz Returns to Motorcycle Racing – Enters the Suzuka 8-Hours with Team Kagayama

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.

MV Agusta F3: The €9,000 Motorcycle that Castiglioni Hopes Will Save the Company

08/10/2010 @ 5:30 pm, by Jensen Beeler8 COMMENTS

MV Agusta F3: The €9,000 Motorcycle that Castiglioni Hopes Will Save the Company 2011 MV Agusta F3 spy shot 2 635x416

UPDATE: The MV Agusta F3 has officially broken cover.

Italian news site Il Sole 24 Ore sat down with the new owner of MV Agutsa, Claudio Castiglioni, and asked the Italian perhaps the most pertinent question about his new company: what’s next? Striking to the point of things, Castiglioni says much of MV Agusta’s future will depend on the company’s new three-cylinder motorcycles, which the company hopes to sell 10,000 of during the next model year.

Officially now called the MV Agusta F3, Castiglioni was also forthright on some of the details. Already rumored to be a 675cc three-cylinder powered motorcycle, Castiglioni has confirmed this setup along with the fact that there will be at least two price points, with a base and sport model being available.

Pricing for the MV Agusta F3 will start at €9,000 with the sportier F3 costing between €10,000-€11,000. Some gorilla math on the A&R international pricing calculator computes those numbers to be just over $9,000 for the base model, and $10,500-$11,500 for the sport, which makes the new F3 a strong rival for the Triumph Daytona and undercuts the new Ducati 848 EVO considerably.

Like the F4 & Brutale, the F3 will have a naked counterpart as well. Castiglioni calls the smaller naked street bike the “Brutalina” which we sincerely hope is not the name the company lands-on for the bike, but the new CEO was quick to say that the naming of the smaller Brutale has not yet been finalized. No word on pricing yet for the smaller Brutale, but expect it to be somewhere in the $8,500 range.

While these prices are encouraging, the goal of 10,00 units in the first year of its restart is a daunting task for MV Agusta. Castiglioni is surely looking at Ducati’s numbers, which sells similar numbers in the lower-priced Monster segment. Time will tell if this strategy is the winning recipe for MV Agusta, and if the brand can maintain its premium sport bike status while undercutting with the F3 progeny.

Source: Il Sole 24 Ore

Top 5 Related Posts:

  1. Spy Photo: MV Agusta Brutale 675 B3
  2. Claudio Castiglioni Passes Away at the Age of 64
  3. MV Agusta Motorcycles Get More Expensive for 2013, Again
  4. Three Flavors of MV Agusta Brutale 1090

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Comment:

  1. soupy says:
    August 10, 2010 at 10:30 PM

    If that price is for real and the styling (Tamburini’s supposed last design) is anything I’m hoping it’ll be, I’m putting my Daytona 675 up for sale and putting a deposit ASAP.

  2. Asphalt_Rubber says:
    August 11, 2010 at 12:31 AM

    MV Agusta F3: The €9,000 Motorcycle that Castiglioni Hopes Will Save the Company – http://aspha.lt/19g #motorcycle

  3. Doug Luberts says:
    August 11, 2010 at 7:08 AM

    If the quality is up there with the F4 and Brutale, I’d easilly consider adding one to the stable …

  4. Alex B says:
    August 11, 2010 at 8:21 AM

    I hope this makes financial sense for MV… The cost of putting together a smaller displacement machine isn’t that much lower than the current crop, unless some things are omitted (go-fast parts, hand assembly, in-house built parts, dare we say, quality control…). Would be curious to see how it turns out.

    That being said.. I want one!

  5. SPQR says:
    August 11, 2010 at 8:42 AM

    I want to see what it looks like naked.

  6. Silver says:
    August 11, 2010 at 10:00 AM

    Let’s just hope that they change up the design of the motorcycle so it doesn’t look like a 10 year old MVF4 just warmed over. They are fantastic looking bikes but why buy a smaller displacement bike when a used F4 can be had for close to the same price. They just need to break the mold of the old F4 (and new one) and come out with something stunning.

  7. Asphalt_Rubber says:
    August 11, 2010 at 1:57 PM

    Castiglioni Spills the beans on MV Agusta F3 and "Brutalina" – http://aspha.lt/19g #motorcycle #mvagusta

  8. ihb says:
    August 28, 2010 at 6:59 AM

    And than of a sudden they use pics that A&R questioned months ago!

    http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/rumors/mv-agusta-f3-3cylinder-head/

    buch of looser they are