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mea culpa

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Numbers are tough, and depending on where you leave a digit off, they can mean very different things. Such is the case with the price we reported on the Ducati 1199 Panigale RS13.

Available only to professional race teams for €134,900, and not €34,900 (Seriously, you people need to stop calling Ducati Corse thinking you can buy one — that’s just cray), the RS13 is the building block bike that you’ll see racing in superbike classes around the world, but most notably in WSBK with Carlos Checa onboard.

So again the take-home message here is you can’t buy the RS13, you probably can’t afford it, and don’t trust everything you read on the internet. Mea culpa.

After all the hype in the Italian media about Friday’s festival in Noale to celebrate the World Superbike Championship victories of Max Biaggi and Aprilia Racing, Biaggi’s announcement for his contract renewal failed to materialize, much to our chagrin. With the build-up and rumors before the event suggesting, and some reputable publications downright saying (ourselves included, minus the reputable part) that Biaggi had signed again with Aprilia, and that the team was set to make the announcement in front of a huge home crowd, the absence of official statement has caused reactions that range the gamut of possibilities.

Some media sources say Biaggi and Aprilia didn’t want to announce the contract right before the MotoGP race at Phillip Island, while others say Biaggi is still holding out for more money. Taking things to the next level, other media outlets have even also gone on to suggest that this is further proof that the 38-year-old Biaggi is set to retire from racing altogether. Deciphering which outlet to believe at this point is really just guesswork, and seemingly everyone is trying to shoehorn their personal view to work with the facts available. And for now, the only fact is that an official announcement hasn’t been made.

BRP hinted last week that it would be entering the side-by-side market with its Can-Am brand. This lead to our speculation on what the company could have up its sleeve as they stated they wanted to be a leader in a new market segment, and have a penchant for thinking outside of the box. Seeing as how the Can-Am Spyder took a whole new meaning to what riding a motorcycle/trike can be like, we expected the same lineage in the Can-Am SxS. That seems fairly obvious, right? Oh how we were wrong. Horribly, horribly, horribly wrong.