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.
Hope it works out, but it seems like more a political move than a strategic one…
Gresini is here to stay. He’s a huge team and a good one at that. Dorna expressed post ’13 that the majority of the field should be CRT’s. I’m sure Gresini wouldn’t mind getting the experience running these CRT’s as soon as possible. He also expressed he wants an Italian rider before signing Bautista.
I am curious who will ride this though…my money is on Andrea Iannone!
Political…maybe. Strategic….sure. Financial…absolutely.
OK. So the factory HOT RODS Prototypes racing against the Prototype frames powered by the ” run of the mill garden variety sold by the 1000′s, everyone has one” I-4(in this case) ?!
Could it last the whole race ? And, at what power level ? Do these hings even have anything remotely as a chance to Ace a race against the Big Four HotRods ?
May as well let the public join in running on Mules…is like bringing a sling shot and a bag of marbles to fight against RPG stocked insurgents in Afghanistan.
Give it enough time and MOTO GP will turn itself into the bitching contest thats WSBK with Twins allowed xtra displacement and the others bitching and moaning thats unfair only that on Moto GP it will be backyard teams bitching how the fat OEMs are not playing fair and have some black magic ilegal tech and that things aint fair and they wont stand a chance against their “vast” R&D resources.
Superbike…C.Y.A(cover your ass).
Money and it’s power is something amazing or should that be “money problems are something amazing”.
P.S: I don’t know whos wrong, the pictures or the print…BUT…the pictures of the bike that http://www.visordown.com has it clearly shows a 2010-2012 Kawasaki ZX-10R Engine.
The clutch cover, it’s “peculiar” shape and form, the ribs on the cam chain side of the head and the shape of the small crank end cover are dead on ringers…ifff the pictures are right.
MikeD, try reading the last paragraph of the visordown article. It clearly states FTR built a chassis housing a ZX-10 motor for the BQR team, and that bike was ridden by Yonny Hernandez at Valencia. The main pic also says it’s Hernandez on the ZX-10 powered FTR.
These motors will not be “run of the mill.” They may start out stock but will be heavily modified. They can be tuned closer to the limits of durability because the CRT teams get twice as many per season. They also get 3 more liters of fuel meaning they have more potential energy to draw from. Making power wont be the CRT’s problems, data analysis and chassis setup will be where the factories will have a distinct advantage.
hrc boss nakamoto said development on the cbr1000 superbike engine stopped 3 years ago
and that teams could lease one but no further development would happen.
I would not count on good results
@Dupree:
Holly Shiznit Batman! I seriously need some “SLEEP REHAB”…now it became pretty real all those jokes about lack of sleep and “flacid brain” performance. lol.
Note to self: MUST STOP skipping the article and going straight for the “witty comments and oppinions”.
Indeed, they have a steep learning curve just up ahead…God Speed to them.
@ pat walker : it’s rare for the parent company ala HRC to keep developing the motor unless they are running the race team which in that case would mean a factory Honda team. However, the factory Honda team will be running their prototypes. In WSBK, Honda has no factory team, this is why they contract the work out to Ten Kate to let them do the development work. Yes they get help from HRC but it’s not HRC’s team. Nor does HRC build motors, usually it’s all contracted out.
The point being is you don’t need the factory to continue development on the engine for it to be competitive, as long as there IS development then it’s fine, especially by such a renowned team (Ten Kate). This is cost effective for the manufactures.
Regarding results/competitiveness based on engine analysis. The media has been buzzing about WSBK lap times compared to MotoGP and how they are getting closer to one another. A properly built production engine has already proven to be fast enough. No GP rider who went to WSBK ever stated the lack of power on their WSBK rides, in fact, quite the contrary. If you read interviews they always state they are surprised by the power of the bikes. The 2 or 3 second gaps between the fastest WSBK bike and the fastest MotoGP bike more probably has to do with two main things. 1. The tires, (I bet the Bridgestones stick much much more) and 2. Chassis set up (in relation to tires). and of course you can’t count out how godly Stoner’s speed is this year. So if Checa, a 38 year old is only 2 seconds slower than Stoner, a 26 year old, on a production few year old Ducati, versus the outright torpedo RC212V of this year at the same track. Then that’s saying something about the level of WSBK bikes.
It sounds like hrc wasted half a billion yen developing the new rcv213 motor when they should just lease a motor from ten kate
how much ?