Ducatisti: do you want the good news or the bad news first? The bad news is that the market for motorcycles 500cc and up is down 17% worldwide for the first quarter of this year, which means the “good” news is that Ducati is only down 5% for Q1 2013. Not exactly the start out of the gate that Audi was hoping for its newly acquired two-wheeled brand, but what are you going to do? Western Europe is a mess, with Spain and Italy continuing to go down like a…well, you know. While we don’t enjoy the misery of motorcycle brands, the fact that Ducati Motor Holding is now under the Audi AG umbrella means that we get far more detailed quarterly and yearly reports from the two-wheeled marque, and we’ve got the digits after the jump.
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.
Laguna Seca used to be a photographer’s paradise. It’s still pretty good, but back then, OMG.
Any time on the tip. I can see a case being made for traction control as improving rider safety by preventing highsides. But I don’t think a similar case can be made for wheelie control. Are the two systems severable?
They were giving the crowd better wheelies during the race then we get on the cool down lap these days. *drool*
Fun to watch but not a serious race. Plus I didn’t see any drifting like we have now.
For those wishing for “no electronics” in GP’s , go and watch NASCAR. It is a series that trails modern motoring. Bikes with no electronics in GP’s would be the same. If you can buy a superbike with traction control and abs how stupid would it be to see GP bikes with nothing.
Be careful what you wish for.
That video makes it quite simple dosnet it, rider aids have diminished the spontaneity & excitement only human input & error can provide. As spectator sports go, that tends to be what your looking for.
Simply put we dont want to watch computers race each other, we get it, its boring alot of the time. The catch 22 is we always want faster & some even safer. I think with GP racing it should be all about the rider and machine and not the safety net of technology to keep you from making a mistake, that in turn produces the greatest rider and races in the world period. Let WSBK, AMA, BSB all run whatever manufac’s want to run with electronics and tech for the bikes they can sell, but in the ultimate forum of proto racing it is a machine and its rider, i will look the other way when it comes to ECU mapping for fuel or data collection.
Leaving for Laguna Seca tomarrow. Sure gets you in the mood. That is real racing, not sanitized, not over regulated. Simocelli would have fit in nicely then, hope they don’t take the unbridled spirit out of that guy
king kenny! What a find!
As a spectator who always tries to go to Laguna, I just can’t sacrifice the time and energy given how processional the racing has been the past few years. Where I was, the only ‘overtaking’ last year was when Dani crashed.
Hopefully the ridiculous fuel limits, the TC, and the bridgestones as they are now are phased out. Sadly, F1 has become much more exciting than MotoGP (and yes they banned TC).
"@Asphalt_Rubber: What MotoGP Racing at Laguna Seca Would Look Like Without Electronic Rider Aids – http://bit.ly/nlTcoZ #motorcycle"
Bruce and p, I’m also heading there tomorrow. Hopefully it will be better this year. The last race was good, but we’ve had a few terrible years since 2006 when I first went to Laguna.
Yeah, lets give everyone 1985 machine so they can wheelie every spot of the track. That would be really great.
Well, as a person who went to Laguna Seca back in the late 70′s, KR used to pull the front end for show. Not so much in the corkscrew, which he did to turn the bike from left to right, but after the hairpin turn before going past the grandstands and back up the hill. KR would pull the front end up, touch the front brake so that the front wheel would stop turning, and drop the bike down, causing a small but visible puff of white smoke. First time the crowd saw that they went crazy. He would do this for a few laps, get the reaction he wanted and get serious and win the race. True showman and great racer.
Like the dual clutch gear box, these aids diminish the need for rider skill and instead become more more of who can hang on the best.
This is great footage of the old track before the infield was put in. And, realize that in 85, KR had been retired for a year and he came out of retirement to do this one race. He hadn’t been on a bike in a year!