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WSBK: Sykes Fastest at Phillip Island Official Testing

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With Carlos Checa dominating Phillip Island during the private tests and the first day of official testing, Tom Sykes displaced the reigning World Superbikes Champion early on in the second day of official testing at Phillip Island. In WSBK’s final test before the season’s racing kicks off this weekend, the Kawasaki rider set the day’s fastest time with a 1:31.648, holding off Checa by just 0.004 seconds. Also setting their best times on Tuesday, Jakub Smrz, Jonathan Rea, and Max Biaggi rounded out the fastest five overall. Marco Melandri was sixth fastest overall, with his best time being set on Monday.

There were a number of crashes that tested both riders and available machinery, of which Leon Haslam was the most notable. The Englishman fractured his right tibia in a high side at the final turn on Monday, leaving the BMW rider to scramble for an available surgery. He tweeted Tuesday, “I’ve finally found a guy to sort things out booked in for a Op on Thursday morning there might be a chance to ride on Sunday,” adding, “fingerscrossed.” Rea also crashed heavily, but did more damage to his bike than himself, and was able to continue throughout the test sessions.

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News

Call Your Mother Because Here is the Ultimate Ducati 1199 Panigale Photo Gallery

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Ducati has been hogging the news the past few weeks, thanks in large part to the debut of the most important motorcycle the Italian motorcycle manufacturer has ever released. With Ducati up for sale and being valued at €1 billion, the Ducati 1199 Panigale sets the record straight that Bologna has not strayed from its sport bike and racing heritage with the release of bikes like the Hypermotard, Multistrada 1200, and Diavel. With Ducati hosting the Panigale’s international press launch in Abu Dhabi at the Yas Marina Circuit (click here to let Ducati know that you wish A&R had been invited to this launch), the initial reports from the assembled press is that all the concerns about Ducati, its frameless chassis design, and its future can be laid to rest.

With a hybrid chain/gear-driven camshaft, titanium valves, a wet slipper clutch, a ride-by-wire throttle, rider-selectable “riding mode” system, and 15,000 mile major service intervals, the Superquadro v-twin motor alone is a major step for Ducati with its Superbike engine design. And, if you add in the first full-LED headlight on a produciton motorcycle, the first electronically-adjustable suspension on a sport bike, the first motorcycle engine braking control system, as well as the first GPS-assisted data acquisition system for a production motorcycle, the total package of the 1199 redefines the word “superbike” and takes the next logical technological step forward in this market segment…and we’ve got over 160 images of the Ducati 1199 Panigale waiting for you after the jump.

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News

KTM Sales up 22.4% in 2011 Thanks to India

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If you want a quick synopsis of how the European motorcycle brands performed in 2011, they killed it. BMW, Ducati, Triumph, and now KTM have all reported double-digit sales growth figures for 2011, a stark contrast to the still struggling sales of Harley-Davidson, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha.  Reporting a 22.4% sales increase last year, KTM made a cool €20.7 million in the process of selling its 81,200 units in 2011 (KTM sold 66,327 units in 2010).

Leading the Austrian company’s growth was the KTM 125 Duke, which has been a huge hit in India, its country of origin, but has also helped grow KTM’s market share in Europe. KTM is also reporting that its latest EXC models have helped spur sales, but we suspect it is the new small-displacement Duke, which was made with developing markets in mind, that is really responsible for the surge in sales growth. KTM says that it expects sales in Europe and North America to remain flat, while the company expects to see growth in emerging markets continue (no surprise there).

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Racing

Casey Stoner & Wife Adriana Welcome a Baby Girl

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Casey Stoner and wife Adriana welcomed their first child today, a girl named Alessandra. With speculation about the announcement going on all day (on Valentino Rossi’s birthday no less), the news became official when HRC confirmed the new arrival to the Stoner family. “We are very happy to announce Alessandra Stoner was born on the 16/02/2012 at 21:55 weighing 2.8kg [6.17 lbs],” tweeted the team. “Mum & baby are both doing well!”

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Racing

First Look: Effenbert-Liberty Racing’s Ducati 1199 Panigale S Superstock 1000 Race Bike

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Although Ducati will not be racing the 2012 Ducati 1199 Panigale in World Superbike this year, the new offering from Bologna found itself unsurprisingly on a revised homologation list this week for the World Superstock 1000 FIM Cup. While there will not be an official factory-backed WSTCK effort, taking up the cause to develop the Panigale on the track will be Effenbert-Liberty Racing, who will campaign two Ducati 1199 superbikes, with Brett McCormick and Federico Sandi at the helms of those machines.

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Racing

Mugen Will Compete in the 2012 Isle of Man TT Zero

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As of today, famed Honda tuning house Mugen will be tackling a new kind of project: the 2012 TT Zero. Announcing and confirming their entry into the Isle of Man TT’s electric motorcycle race, Mugen will be showcasing not only the company’s lesser-known motorcycle tuning chops, but also its hand at prepping electric vehicles for racing duty. Found in 1973 by Hirotoshi Honda (son to Honda founder Soichiro Honda), Mugen has previously made its name mostly on the automotive side of things, though the company offers a bevy of prepared Honda motorcycles as well.

Said to be campaigning an all-new original electric motorcycle, if we had to take a stab at what Mugen could be bringing to the Isle of Man TT, we doubt we’d have to dive too deep into our imagination. While it may not be quite as big of news as Honda itself racing in the TT Zero, we can expect Mugen to bring a very competent and polished machine to the Isle of Man, and we can also officially begin the speculation between Mugen’s entry and its connection to a certain Japanese motorcycle manufacturer.

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Racing

MotoGP: Portuguese GP is a Go for 2012

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After much speculation that MotoGP would forego stopping in Portugal this year, the premier motorcycle racing series will keep five stops on the Iberian peninsula on its 2012 MotoGP Championship calendar after all. With the Portuguese GP struggling to make ends meet, it was thought that Estoril would be dropped for 2012, as it seemed increasingly clear that the local government was not going to step in and help subsidize the cost of hosting MotoGP in Portugal. Coming to some sort of accord with Dorna & the FIM, MotoGP has confirmed that Estoril will remain on the schedule for this year, though its future is certainly still tenuous.

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News

BRD RedShift MX Will Break Cover at Indy

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There is a reason our humble motorcycle blog is called Asphalt & Rubber, as we tend to stick to the street side of the motorcycling equation. Growing up in a house where motorcycles were verboden, I often think that I’m the only person “in the industry” that didn’t grow up riding a dirt bike (something I hope to rectify this year, so more on that later). Still, I wanted to give some love to our friends across the bridge, as BRD Motorcycles is about to unveil the next motorcycle in its electric line-up: the BRD RedShift MX.

As the name implies, the MX version is not terribly dissimilar from the BRD RedShift SM prototype that I rode at Infineon a couple months ago, and will make its public debut at the Indy Dealer Expo later this week. Changing out the brakes, sprockets, wheels, and tires, the conversion from SM to MX seems fairly straight-forward with the BRD RedShift (I’d expect to see some kind of kit available from BRD for this). Perhaps that’s because the digital drivetrain is where most of the magic happens as far as making the RedShift a dirt-clawing demon instead of a street-chewing monster (can you gasoline motor do that?).

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Reviews

Ride Review: Ducati 1199 Panigale

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Fresh from the Ducati 1199 Panigale international press launch at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, our friends from OmniMoto.it have been kind enough to share their experience on Ducati’s newest flagship model, since Asphalt & Rubber wasn’t one of the American publications invited to test Borgo Panigale’s latest creation ( to let Ducati know that you want to see A&R at future events!).

Our Italian brother in arms, OmniMoto’s Lorenzo Gargiulo shares his initiation to the 1199, while riding around one the world’s most expensive race circuits…the lucky bastard. With much thanks to him, enjoy Lorenzo’s review and continue to countdown the months until A&R will get its own chance to flog the Ducati 1199 Panigale in a similar manner. -Jensen

It is a known fact that journalists like to complain to motorcycle manufacturers, because some OEMs give you too little notice before a press event, while others fill up your calendar with possible dates way before they have something set on their own schedule. In the present case, Ducati told us about this event almost two months ago, which for this writer has led to an incredible amount of performance anxiety that has lasted until today.

Consider this: we are testing a new bike, which is set to take the scepter as the Queen of all the Superbikes, and it is to be tested on a new track, the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, where no journalist in the world had ever done a lap aboard a motorcycle. Accordingly, there was enough anticipation and excitement surrounding the event to make it difficult for anyone to fully process the true performance potential of the 2012 Ducati 1199 Panigale. Fortunately, the Panigale did not disappoint our expectations, and instead went way beyond them, unleashing breathtaking performances.

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Horex VR6 Roadster to Begin Production

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In the past when a new motorcycle entry has come to market, we are bombarded with a bevy of media releases about the company’s two-wheeled offering. Usually this also means that Twitter gets lit up like a Roman candle, and Facebook turns into a digital burlesque show where each piece of the bike is slowly revealed and teased in front of us. Such is not the case with Horex however, as the revived German motorcycle brand is being very…well, German about its VR6 roadster.

Set to being production on the non-supercharged Horex VR6 in the coming weeks, the jewel of the German company, its six-cylinder narrow-angled VR motor, will be built in Augsburg, Germany. Initially making only a few bikes a day, Horex’s assembly line will feature the “one man, one bike” approach, where a single-worker will work on the same motorcycle throughout the company’s four-stage build process (read: more Ferdinand Porsche, less Henry Ford). Each bike built by Horex is made to order, though we are not sure how any pre-orders have been made with the company, let alone what the price tag could look like.

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Yas Marina Circuit + Troy Bayliss + Ducati 1199 Panigale S

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The International press launch of the Ducati 1199 Panigale is underway in Abu Dhabi this week, with initial reports on Ducati’s flagship superbike being very positive. A track usually reserved for cars, not bikes, the Yas Marina Circuit is really something to behold. Situated on a man-made island off the Abu Dhabi coast, the Middle-Eastern track cost a cool $1.32 billion to construct back in 2009, and holds the distinction for being one of Formula One’s night races.

Such a setting is of course appropriate for Ducati to introduce its latest creation, and the Italian company will be showcasing the first production motorcycle with an LED headlight, the first sport bike with electronically-adjustable suspension, and of course putting journalists on the company’s much-talked-about “frameless” monocoque chassis design. Expected on dealer floors in April, the base model Ducati 1199 Panigale will cost $17,995, while the “S” will cost $22,995, and “S Tricolore” will hit the wallet for $27,995 MSRP.

While we wait for the Panigale to come across the Atlantic Ocean, Ducati has put together this video of Troy Bayliss taking a lap around the 21 turns of the Yas Marina Circuit. It’s an oddly edited video, but should bring grins to the Ducatisti in your life. Be sure to turn your speakers up to hear the Superquadro v-twin motor in all its glory.

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