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Paul Carruthers Appointed Editorial Director of Cycle News and Motorcycle USA as MAG Consolidates Holdings

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Motorsport Aftermarket Group (MAG) is probably not a name that many of our readers are familiar with, but it is the company behind brands like Performance Machine wheels, Roland Sands Design, Renthal handlebars, Vance & Hines exhausts, along with a list of other lesser-known aftermarket brands. Straying from its namesake, MAG made some waves recently when it acquired the Motorcycle Superstore online retail outlet.

Another story of interest involves a division of Motorsport Aftermarket Group: the MAG Media Group (MMG), which bought Cycle News back in 2010 and acquired Motorcycle USA with the Motorcycle Superstore purchase. Owning one of the oldest print publications in the business, as well as the largest web-based publication in the industry, MAG has realigned its MMG operations to consolidate the management of the two publications, with longtime editor Paul Carruthers taking on the role of Editorial Director in the business reshuffling.

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Trackside Tuesday: The Story Begins

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When I photograph a race, I get only portions of the story: the beginning, snippets of the middle, and the end. It’s something like reading a novel by skimming every third or fourth chapter until arriving at the last page and having someone summarize it. (I get the end if, that is, I can see the results on the tower as in Qatar. At some tracks I don’t know for sure who won until I get back to the media center.)

Each January we say “This season is going to be great!” and for 2013 there seems to be more reason to believe that than ever, which is how the weekend’s story began. When we arrived at Losail, there was more anticipation in the paddock for a great season of racing ahead than I can remember.

Even with Casey Stoner gone, pre-season testing had raised expectations for Marc Marquez even higher than they had been at the end of 2012. We knew Pedrosa would be fast and win races. And we knew Lorenzo would be the man to beat.

What we didn’t know was how competitve Valentino Rossi would be after his two years at Ducati. There seemed to be a visceral need in the paddock for him to return to form, to be Valentino again. After ups and downs in the practice and qualifying sessions, he would start from seventh place on the grid, with Lorenzo on pole and likely to run away into the night.

Would we see a return of the Rossi flair that has inspired millions of fans around the world? Or would the fairy tale turn out to be a tragedy?

One thing was for sure as we stood on the grid after a very long winter break, waiting to find out the answer to this question: The crowd, even though largely Spanish and there to support top riders in all three classes, was even more ready to see Rossi go fast again than those in the paddock.

The track announcer introduced the various riders, and when he came to Rossi, the sudden rise in enthusiasm hit like a wall of sound. Official attendance for Sunday was a paltry 9,704 fans, but it sounded like all of them were on their feet cheering as Rossi turned and waved.

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Honda TT Legends 2013 Season Preview

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While many of us are counting down the start to the second rounds of World Superbike and MotoGP, the season-opener for the FIM Endurance World Championship is just around the corner as well. Starting the season with the Bol d’Or 24 Heures at Magny-Cours on April 20th, the Honda TT Legends dream team was out in Albacete, Spain getting some last minute practice in with their Honda CBR1000RR endurance race bike.

Built around the relatively low-tech Honda CBR1000RR street bike, the TT Legends crew have fitted the CBR with a MoTeC ECU, which provides traction control, wheelie control, and other electronic rider aids. Though the system is not necessarily increasing the top lap times of riders John McGuinness, Michael Rutter, Michael Dunlop, and Andrew Simon, the MoTeC ECU does allow for the riders to ride within a more comfortable margin of safety and use less energy while on the bike.

In the game of endurance racing, managing riders’ energy is just as crucial of a component as is keeping the bike out of the kitty litter. Addressing both those concerns with their modifications, the Honda TT Legends team should be better equipped to challenge for the podium in the four-round Championship, especially at the longer 24-hour races like the Bol d’Or and Le Mans.

Helping us gear-up for the incoming season, there is some dubstepped video goodness after the jump. Enjoy.

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Is Norton Using Semi-Active Suspension for the IOMTT?

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Norton Motorcycles is gearing up for another entry into the Isle of Man TT, and while the British company’s project has been sequestered in Donington Park during the off-season, the team has released one very interesting photo of the now named Norton TT Racer.

Giving us a glimpse of the bike’s front wheel area, we can see that Norton is using BST carbon fiber wheels, six-pot ISR calipers, Dunlop tires, and Öhlins suspension.

However, the interesting thing with the Öhlins FGR forks is that they are clearly beyond WSBK-spec, and there appears to be electrical connections going to the forks’ rebound and compression damping adjusters.

The electrical leads can only mean one thing, a racing setup with semi-active suspension.

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Photos: The Five AGV Pista GP Helmets in MotoGP

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Since October is just simply too long of a wait for the Italian company’s new uber carbon fiber racer lid to come to the United States, our bromance with the AGV Pista GP helmet continues to manifest itself online here at Asphalt & Rubber — and yes, we also don’t have the patience for the still-very-racey but-less-uber fiberglass-bodied AGV Corse, which comes a little earlier to the US, in September.

With the MotoGP season starting in earnest this weekend, one of the more minor highlights was the debut of all the riders’ new helmets, and for 2013 we now have five Pistas to drool over on the MotoGP grid, which certainly doesn’t help our “patience is a virtue” mantra.

While we work on centering our chi, there are a bevy of  photos for you after the jump. However, on any given Sunday you can find Stefan Bradl, Andrea Iannone, Danilo Petrucci, Lukas Pesek, and of course Valentino rep’n their Pistas on the grid. Which one is your favorite?

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BMW Partners with TVS on Sub-500cc Motorcycles

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Finally after nine months of dancing with each other around the negotiations table, Germany’s BMW Motorrad and India’s TVS (one of the country’s largest motorcycle manufacturers) have inked an agreement that will see the companies develop sub-500cc motorcycles together.

The announcement is another move that sees Western brands collaborating with Indian companies to develop models suited for India and other developing nations that have high riding populations.

Decisively light in the loafers when it comes to small-displacement motorcycles, the move is a boon for BMW Motorrad, which just recently saw rival KTM surpass it in total volume of sales — a move that was spurred largely by the Austrian company’s partnership with Bajaj and their joint work on the small-displacement Duke series.

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Sunday Summary at Qatar: The Day MotoGP Changed — Or, At Least Started To

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What was the big story of the MotoGP season opener in Qatar? It’s obvious: The Doctor is back. After a failed pass on Andrea Dovizioso, in which he ran wide and hit his brake lever protector on the back of Dani Pedrosa’s rear tire. “The protection saved me, because for sure I crash [without it]” he said afterwards.

He upped the pace and chased down the group containing Dani Pedrosa, Marc Marquez, and Cal Crutchlow, passed them all, and after a thrilling battle with Marquez, went on to take second place in his first race back with Yamaha. If anyone thought that Rossi might have lost it, this was the race in which he proved that he was still capable of being at the front, the only condition being that he has a decent machine underneath him.

That reading of the race, though both attractive and seductive, is not the complete picture. Viewed with a more jaundiced eye, Rossi was comprehensively thrashed by his teammate – “In this weekend, I think it is impossible to beat Lorenzo,” he admitted.

Closing down on a group being held up by a struggling Pedrosa, who had been troubled by a lack of rear grip all weekend, Rossi then had enormous difficulty dealing with a MotoGP rookie, racing for the first time in the class. Is that beautiful palace on the horizon real, or was it just a mirage, a trick of the light in the desert?

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Saturday Summary at Qatar: Starting like a Champion & Qualifying Strategy

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If you have aspirations of winning the championship, the first qualifying session of the year is your first chance to stake your claim. Qualifying is the moment you state your intentions, show everyone what you have, and what they are up against.

The rest of the year, pole position is nice, but the most important thing is to be on the front row, and get a good start. But at the first qualifying session of the year for the first race of the year, you need to send your opponents a message: This is what you are up against. This is what you face if you wish to beat me.

Champions know this. At Qatar, the champions made their presence felt, and announced their intent to the world. In MotoGP, the defending champion – and the man who starts the year as favorite – set a pace that none could follow, robbing upstart Cal Crutchlow of what would have been his first pole.

In Moto2, Pol Espargaro made a mistake, crashed, and corrected his error as soon as his bike was rebuilt, pushing hard to take pole in the dying seconds of the session. And In Moto3, Luis Salom took his first ever Grand Prix pole by putting it on the line when it mattered, seeing off all-comers in the final moments, while Maverick Viñales gritted his teeth to ride through the pain and grab 2nd on the grid.

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