Although the Triumph Tiger 800 and Triumph Tiger 1200 models are doing well in the market, the British brand from Hinckley doesn’t seem ready to kill the Triumph Tiger 1050, and has instead revised the model for the 2013 model year.
Adding 10hp to the three-cylinder motor (123 hp & 76.7 lbs•ft of torque at the crank now), the renamed Triumph Tiger Sport features a new single-sided swingarm, a slimmer subframe, a revised suspension and geometry, along with redesigned fairings and wheels.
The cancelling of the Argentinian round of MotoGP has had a knock-on effect for the World Superbike series as well. The dropping of the race in Argentina caused MotoGP to push its season opener at Qatar back a week to April 7th, which then put it on the same weekend as the World Superbike round scheduled for Aragon on the same date.
To avoid a clash of the two series, the FIM has chosen to move the date of the Aragon WSBK round, moving it back a week in turn to April 14th, filling the gap between the MotoGP rounds at Qatar and Austin.
It will be a new year soon, and for some of Asphalt & Rubber‘s more international readers, New Year’s Eve may have already given way to New Year’s Day (Happy New Year, if that’s already the case). Going through my RSS feed, it seems obligatory that we make some sort of Happy New Year proclamation, summarize the stories the site has covered, and share some insight on the inner-workings of our operation here at A&R. The Dude abides.
Unsurprisingly, the starting point to our story begins roughly 12 months ago, as with the start of each year I like to look back on the 365 or so days we just completed, and outline my plans for the coming year. Some of that planning is just basic business stuff like benchmarks I hope to achieve with the site traffic, readership, and financials, while the rest of that planning is comprised of stories or events I would like the site to attend and cover.
Four continents, a dozen or so timezones, and more countries than I can remember, the 1,000+ articles written this year on Asphalt & Rubber are truly international in their origin, as are the 4.5+ million of you who came here and read those stores 10 million times. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the site continues to grow in the double digits, with the A&R readership growing another 30% in 2012 over last year.
Pushing over 20 TB (the TB stands for terabytes, or 1,024 gigabytes) of data, those numbers make Asphalt & Rubber not only just the largest motorcycle blog in the United States, but one of the largest in the world — something I find mildly amusing, since yours truly is more than mildly dyslexic.
As for trends, being an online publication means that we are on the front line of watching the motorcycle industry’s adoption of social media, with 10% of our readers finding us on social networks. The real interesting part? This figure is up 40% over last year.
Instead of just listing our top ten or so stories this year, something which most of you could probably guess the list of quite easily, I have tried to cultivate some basic topics from within the industry and the stories that drove those topics this year, as well as some stories that stood out to our editorial eyes. Enjoy them after the jump.
It hasn’t even been two months since MV Agusta debuted it line-up of motorcycles for the 2013 model year, but the Italian company is already revising its European pricing ahead of the 2013 bikes’ debut in the coming spring. With most models getting a €200 to €300 boost in MSRP, the only MV’s unaffected by this strange price increase are the base model MV Agusta Brutale 1090 and base model MV Agusta F4.
The three-cylinder MV Agusta F3 and MV Agusta Brutale 675 machines get a €200 kick across the board, while the four-cylinder machines get the €300 price increase. No word as to why MV Agusta is increasing the price (though we can guess that the Varese brand is looking for some more euros on its bottom line).
The price change is an especially strange move after releasing its 2013 line so recently, and shows MV Agusta second-guessing itself on one of the company’s more important decisions. It is not clear at this time how this news will affect pricing in North America, if at all (we suggest contacting your dealer). A full breakdown of the price changes is after the jump.
As far as calendars go, the Pirelli annual is probably the most well-regarded worldwide. Featuring the very best photographers, shooting the very best models, and traveling to the most picturesque locations, Pirelli’s calendar is an exclusive item, with only a handful given to VIP Pirelli customers and celebrities.
A mixture of high-fashion, nudes, and art, names like Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bündchen, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Milla Jovovich, Heidi Klum, Sophia Loren, and Penélope Cruz have graced the pages of the this pin-up style publication.
For 2013 though, the Pirelli calendar is going to look a bit different. For starters, the photographs were taken not by one of the fashion industry’s greats, but instead renowned photojournalist Steve McCurry, who is perhaps best known for his photo “Afghan Girl” that made the cover of National Geographic back in June 1985.
When we talk about shrinking grid sizes, it is usually MotoGP that gets the bulk of our scrutiny; however, some concern is starting to be generated over how large the field will be for the World Superbike Championship next season.
While there were 23 bikes on the starting grid at Phillip Island in 2012, for 2013 that number could well be 19 or less at the season-opener. While there are a number of factors for the smaller grid, it is no small coincidence that WSBK is short the same number of bikes that Effenbert Liberty Racing fielded last season.
Suzuki’s return to the MotoGP Championship continues to gain steam, as the Japanese company has submitted a request to Dorna for testing during the 2013 season. Talking to BBC Sport, Dorna’s Carmelo Ezpeleta said “[Suzuki] are asking us to have some testing during the 2013 season and if everything goes well maybe we will see them in 2014.”
Suzuki is said to be looking to test its GP race bike with the MotoGP field, and perhaps even run a few wild cards in 2013, before launching a full program the following year. Many names have been linked to the Suzuki project, with Randy de Puniet the lastest MotoGP rider to be associated with the team, and tipped to be Suzuki’s test rider.
MV Agusta continues to push out details and photos of its 2013 models ahead of next week’s EICMA show, giving us our first proper look of the 2013 MV Agusta Rivale 800. Sharing its 798cc three-cylinder motor with the MV Agusta Brutale 800, the MV Agusta Rivale 800 is the Varese brand’s take on the niche hypermotard market.
Giving us already a glimpse of the MV Agusta Rivale with the company’s concept sketch of the machine, it is clear from the finished product that MV Agusta has channeled a great deal of the Ducati Hypermotard in the Rivale, with the two bike’s sharing a very similar visage.
Forced to go to World Superbike for the 2012 season, Hiroshi Aoyama will return to the big show for the 2013 season, with the Avintia Blusens team. Trading his Honda CBR1000RR superbike for a Kawasaki-powered CRT entry, Aoyama will perhaps miss the days when he was on a Honda RC212V prototype, but certainly won’t miss the Pirelli-shod production machine, which he only managed to race to a 18th place championship points finish.
Entirely unimpressive in WSBK, Aoyama has something that many CRT riders do not: experience on the tricky Bridgestone tires. That fact alone should make Aoyama a potent weapon for the Avintia Blusens squad, which has struggled to develop its CRT entry — due partially to the talent on the machine. With the help of Aoyama’s MotoGP experience, and 250GP Championship title behind him, the BQR team might find some more traction and direction with its work — having Hector Barbera along for the ride as a teammate won’t hurt either.
News coming out of India and Southeast Asia (which Cycle World is bizarrely taking credit for starting, despite being months late to the party), is that Yamaha is set to debut a 250cc sport bike for the world market. Said to be visually similar to the Yamaha YZF-R6 (concept sketch above), the quarter-liter four-stroke machine is certainly a response to the recent offerings from Honda and Kawasaki.
Expected to be a 2013 or 2014 model, we will almost certainly get our first glimpse of the bike, or its concept, at the upcoming 2012 EICMA motorcycle show in Milan. With details about the “Yamaha YZF-R250” being scarce, we would wager a 2014 launch date, but as always, time will tell. Expect pricing to be sub-$5,000 though, with optional ABS.
The FIM has issued a revised version of the 2013 MotoGP calendar. The new calendar is only a minor update to the initial calendar issued on September 21st, with only one real change, the switching of the Sachsenring to a week earlier. That move was forced on the FIM, as Formula One had scheduled the Grand Prix of Germany at the Nurburgring for the same date. Holding an F1 race and a MotoGP race in the same country and on the same date was not a viable situation, and so the Sachsenring race was moved.
The other update to the calendar was not a change, but a confirmation. The Grand Prix of the Americas has been confirmed as taking place on April 21st, at the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. That had been widely expected, but could not be confirmed until contracts were signed. The continuing dispute between the Circuit of the Americas and Kevin Schwantz over the rights to organize the Austin round of MotoGP will not affect the scheduling of the race.
