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There has been a lot of death this year in motorcycle racing. At Mugello, Jason Dupasquier crashed and was hit by another rider during qualifying for the Moto3 race, and died in the early hours of the following morning.

At Aragon, during the European Talent Cup race held at a round of the FIM CEV championship, Hugo Millán crashed during the race and was hit by another bike, dying as a result of his injuries.

And yesterday, during the WorldSSP300 race at Jerez, Dean Berta Viñales crashed at Turn 2 and was hit by another rider, dying in hospital a few hours later. Dupasquier was 19, Millán was 14, Viñales 15.

The deaths – three teenagers in the space of less than four months – led to a great deal of introspection in the racing world, and concerns over what should be done to prevent this from happening again.

A lot of people had a lot of ideas, but the thing that strikes me about these deaths is that, as good as some ideas might be, there are no easy answers.

I was supposed to have an interview with Yamaha Racing managing director Lin Jarvis this weekend, arranged well beforehand. That ended up not happening, unsurprisingly.

Lin Jarvis had more important things to deal with than answering my questions. And my list of questions seemed a good deal less relevant this weekend than they had a few days earlier.

For this weekend was all about Maverick Viñales. Whether he, or we, wanted it to be or not.

The Monster Energy Yamaha rider (but not for long) arrived at Assen after finishing dead last at the Sachsenring, topped both sessions of free practice on Friday, had an explosive meeting with Yamaha on Friday evening, secured pole with a blistering lap on Saturday, then found a way to only finish second on Sunday, well behind his teammate Fabio Quartararo.

Oh yes, and there were the reports that he had signed for Aprilia for 2021 on Saturday night as well.

The last time we had a weekend like this was at Austria in 2019, when Johann Zarco announced that he had asked KTM to terminate his contract with immediate effect.

But, though that rupture was more dramatic, Zarco stepping away with immediate effect and leaving KTM scrabbling around for a replacement rider, at least it made sense from a results perspective.

Zarco had had one top ten finish and one front row start, after three podiums in each of the preceding two years.

By now, the dust has settled on the commotion surrounding the Yamaha YZF-R7 debut - one of the more surprising and interesting motorcycles to debut so far this year.

This fully faired middleweight-twin takes the Yamaha MT-07 platform, with its 689cc parallel-twin engine, and prepares it for Yamaha's "R" world of sport-focused, track-ready, motorcycles.

This week, we will see the first real life assessments of the new R7, and of course the reviews will be glowing pieces of literature - because those are the only kind of reviews that Yamaha USA will now tolerate.

Don't let that detract from what the R7 represents, however. Like its naked sibling, the YZF-R7 will disrupt the middleweight-twins category, which has long been stagnating on the vine with bikes like the Suzuki SV650.

This stalwart bike has long been the go-to entry point for new riders and veteran racers alike, but the SV650's decades of service have seen little in the way of deserving and meaningful change.

The means that the opportunity for a little disruption is ripe, and the Yamaha YZF-R7 is just set to be one of the key bikes to satiate our appetite.

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There comes a time in every racer’s career that they have to ask themselves if it is time to stop. It is a question they invariably spend a long time giving the wrong answer to; the life of an elite athlete means they always travel more in hope than in expectation.

But, sometimes that hope is justified: they find the speed they were missing. The setback was not their fault, but down to circumstances. But proving the reverse, that circumstances won’t ride in on a white horse to save them, takes a very long time to accept.

The news that the Buell Motorcycles name would return from the shadows of the motorcycle industry has certainly stirred the two-wheel world . The American brand was not without its rabid fans, but it garnered plenty of detractors as well over the course of its history, and through its various incarnations.

Never quite at home inside the Harley-Davidson family, the Buell Motorcycle Company was shuttered in October 2009. Not one to quit though, Erik Buell continued the company's ideals in another self-branded endeavor: Erik Buell Racing.

This startup would be short-lived though, bringing only two models to market, in its roughly five-year run. Despite being unshackled from Harley-Davidson, EBR foundered in the marketplace, and floundered on the race track.

At the conclusion of both of these separate ventures, there was Liquid Asset Partners - a Michigan-based company that makes its business from buying the assets of bankrupt companies and flipping them to buyers for a profit.

But for Bill Melvin (the CEO of LAP), the motorcycle brands of Buell and EBR were not business as usual.

At the end of EBR's road under Erik Buell's management, LAP continued its operations, albeit in a very limited manner, assembling motorcycles from the plethora of parts LAP had acquired in the bankruptcy proceedings, and selling them to EBR's remaining enthusiastic customers.

When the chance came to buy the Buell name from Harley-Davidson, LAP didn't hesitate. The two estranged motorcycle companies of Erik Buell could now merge under one roof, and Buell Motorcycles was born again.

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We are just a couple day away from Suzuki's big motorcycle announcement for 2021, and the full might of the Japanese marketing is busy getting us excited for the next generation of Hayabusa hyperbike.

Suzuki wasn't exactly coy when it began its teaser campaign for the new model reveal, and of course it didn't take long for details, teaser images, and even a promotional video, to leak onto the internet.

Fueling the fire even before all of this, there has been no shortage of rumors regarding the next Hayabusa's look and performance characteristics.

Make no mistake, this new Hayabusa is a highly anticipated model from Suzuki, and I would argue that this is the most important motorcycle release ever from Suzuki.

I do not make that statement lightly.

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When we will be able to go racing? That’s the question everybody wants an answer to, as MotoGP and WorldSBK rounds are canceled seemingly every week.

The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has cast a pall over the world that not even motorcycle racing can escape. This week, MotoGP was canceled at Mugello and Barcelona.

Last week, it was MotoGP at Le Mans, the week before that, Jerez MotoGP and Assen WorldSBK. Each race is canceled as it heaves into view on the calendar.

So when will we be able to go racing again? I don’t know. You don’t know. The truth is, nobody knows, not even Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta or FIM president Jorge Viegas.

Because it is out of their hands. Organizing a world championship motorcycle race is complicated, and requires large numbers of people and equipment to cross multiple national borders using various modes of transport.

Long time readers of Asphalt & Rubber will surely know that I have tough criticisms regarding the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA). As the leading organization to represent motorcyclists and to co-ordinate our efforts and thoughts to policy makers, industry stakeholders, and the public at large, I often find the AMA's actions (or lack thereof) to be wanting.

Nothing illustrates this better than the AMA's policy regarding helmet laws, where one side of the AMA's mouth touts how the organization is against any sort mandatory helmet laws being passed in the USA, while the other corner of the mouth preaches that all motorcyclists should wear a helmet when they ride a motorcycle.

The issue is an example of how the AMA is held hostage by motorcycling's libertarian population, and by catering to this vocal group's whims, this organization that is supposed to represent all motorcyclists ends up alienating the very people it is supposed to serve.

It is a great metaphor for how the motorcycle industry operates as a whole in the United States, and while the industry is starting to realize that it needs to cater to members of the population who aren't just old, white, male, or politically conservative, the AMA has been slow to get with the program.

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If you had asked me before the 2019 EICMA show what bike I was most-certain to see debuting for production from BMW Motorrad, the answer surely would have been the BMW R18 cruiser. 

The German brand has been teasing this new machine for an inordinate amount of time (since well before the last EICMA show), bringing a bevy of concept bikes to realization in the process to help ease us into the idea of a big air-cooled, pushrod, boxer engine design with an eye on the cruiser scene.

Surely at Milan, we would see the R18 make its debut, and surely were we disappointed when BMW showed us yet another concept for the motorcycle. It is as if no one learned from Yamaha's mistake with the Ténéré 700.

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The new Honda CBR1000RR-R is finally out in the wild, and while Honda was able to keep this machine under wraps for the bulk of its development, there was a lot about the new Fireblade that we knew going into EICMA.

We knew that it would have winglets. We knew that it would make 215hp and weigh around 440 lbs at the curb...and from that we knew it would have the best power-to-weight ratio in class.

We also had a rough idea on what the bike would look like, thanks to an automotive photographer that was at the Suzuka circuit.

We even knew what the new name for this superbike would be. But yet, the 2020 Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade was very much a suprise when it was unveiled at EICMA on Monday night.

Certain to be the talk of the EICMA show throughout the week, here are some quick thoughts and bullet points, now that we have had time to process this new superbike.

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