Proud of the opportunity to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia showed its accomplishments to the world during the opening ceremony on Friday by showing off its culture, traditions, and highlights of its post-World War II industrial economy.
As part of those highlights, a procession of twenty bright red Ural sidecars rolled across the ice at Fisht Olympic Stadium, as three billion people looked on via television.
“Have you ever been to Brazil?” is a common question amongst pale twenty-somethings that have been to the Brazillian Carnaval or New Year’s and come back with a few venereal diseases under their belt (so to speak). Brazil has much more to offer than hedonistic festivals and pristine beaches though.
It’s also home to nearly 200 million people, many of whom ride two wheelers everyday as the ideal form of personal transport. Italian brand, Benelli, has recently announced the opening of 12,500 square meters of additional factory space to the existing 100,000 square meters of space at the Bramont Motorcycle facility in Manaus.
It’s Wednesday, so that means another installment of the “TT Legends” documentary. For Episode Five, we find the boys still at the Isle of Man TT, the namesake for the Honda TT Legends team.
2012 was a particularly eventful year for the TT, as Simon Andrews escaped with his life in a harrowing crash, the Senior TT was cancelled, for the first time ever on account of rain, and John McGuinness finally won a Superstock TT race.
As usual, the episode is a great watch, and this time around things focus pretty heavily on John McGuinness (we even get a glimpse of him on his electric superbike, the Mugen Shinden).
With 20 TT wins to his name now, McPint will be looking to make further progress on Joey Dunlop’s record during the 2014 outing. Standing in his way will be a bevy of powerhouse riders, including the recently announced Michael Dunlop, who will be racing with a factory-backed BMW S1000RR.
The Kawasaki Ninja line began life with the Kawasaki GPZ900R (the Ninja 900 to its friends) in 1984. Now 30 years later, Kawasaki is celebrating three decades of Ninja motorcycles, a model name that has become synonymous with the sport bike segment.
While the Ninja 900 began as Maverick’s daily ride in the movie Top Gun, the model sparked what would later become the superbike wars amongst the Japanese manufacturers.
The Ninja name has grown in time to become the Ninja ZX-10R superbike, refined itself to become the Ninja ZX-14R sport-tourer, and also grown into the small-displacement offerings of the Ninja 250R and Ninja 300, with many models in between.
A Ninja also just recently won the World Superbike Championship — not bad for a Gen-Xer. So we bid Happy Birthday to the Ninja, and hope for another 30 years of awesome green bikes with the Ninja name emblazoned upon them. Got a story about your Ninja? Leave it in the comments.
Officially official now, and despite his previous denial of the news, Michael Dunlop will be riding in the 2014 Isle of Man TT, and on a factory-backed BMW, no less.
A seven-time TT race winner, Dunlop’s star rose considerably higher in last year’s Isle of Man TT, and his absence from the 2014 gathering seemed unconscionable.
Thankfully TT fans will get to watch the nephew of Joey race again around the Mountain Course, as well as at other road racing events this year after all.
AMA Pro Racing has announced that the series’ premier race, the Daytona 200, will once again feature 1,000cc Superbikes, starting in the 2015 season. A bit of an oddity on the AMA Pro Road Racing calendar, the Daytona 200 is America’s longest-running motorcycle endurance racing event, and historically it has kicked off the road racing season in America.
With Daytona International Speedway’s high speeds and long stints, riding the Daytona 200 has been a challenge for riders, for a variety of reasons. This lead to Superbikes being replaced by the strangely formatted Formula Xtreme class for the Daytona 200 race class in 2005 thru 2008. As tire and safety concerns continued, the modified 600cc Daytona SportBike class took over in 2009, and has run the race ever since.
While it has always been seen as an oddity by fans that AMA Pro Road Racing’s premier class didn’t run the series’ headline event, the safety concerns regarding 200+ horsepower bikes chewing through tires on the road course has been a paramount issue — even the Daytona SportBike bikes have had their fair share of tire woes at Daytona.
In order to get the Superbikes through the 69-lap endurance race, the folks at DMG say that the new upcoming rules package, which will reduce the cost of racing in AMA Pro Road Racing, is largely to be thanked.
We are still getting over the loss of Tommy Aquino, who died while riding motocross in Southern California just last week. A popular rider in the AMA Pro Racing, British Superbike, and Spanish CEV series, the untimely passing of Tommy is being felt around the world.
A memorial service for Tommy will be held at 2PM on Saturday, February 15th at the Bishop Alemany High School (11111 North Alemany Drive, Mission Hills, CA). A remembrance is also scheduled afterwards at 28588 Santa Catarina Road, Saugus, CA — the Aquino Family encourages all to attend.
While we all continue to grieve, we do best to remember the good times, and as such Roversberg Productions has put together a nice tribute video of Tommy. Enjoy it above.
One of the great privileges which holding a MotoGP media pass allows is to stand behind the armco and watch and listen to the bikes as they go past. At the Sepang test, I made full use of that opportunity, and wandered over to Turn 3 – the glorious, fast right hander, where the riders get sideways driving through the turn and onto the short straight to Turn 4 – to enjoy the spectacle of the best riders of the world showing off their skills.
There is more to be learned from watching at trackside than just how spectacular MotoGP bikes are through fast corners, though. The careful observer can pick up clues to what both the riders and factories are doing. With electronics such a key part of MotoGP nowadays, the track is one of the few places where updates are visible.
Updated vehicle dynamics algorithms may be invisible from pit lane (or nearly so, with the occasional addition of sensors or torque gauges the only visible clue), bike behavior on the track will sometimes betray them.
At the end of 2013, Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa had asked for more stability under braking, and some more corner speed. Listening to the bikes at Sepang gave a possible clue as to how they had achieved that. The differences in engine note between the various bikes were instructive of the varying levels of electronics, engine braking strategies, and gearbox function.
That Honda have been working on braking and corner entry was audible at Sepang. Though the RC213V always sounded smooth under braking, braking for Turn 4 the improvement was noticeable.
After an announcement in late 2013 that Michael Dunlop would be forced to sit out the 2014 road racing season, rumors are flying that he has pitched a tent in the BMW paddock.
Although no official statement has been made yet, MCN and Bennetts are both reporting the seven-time TT winner will be signing a deal to ride an BMW S1000RR for BMW Motorrad in the Superbike TT classes, along with a BMW HP4 that he will be riding for his own team, Michael Dunlop Racing, in Superstock TT race.
By the time you read this, I will hopefully be on my way out of Portland, Oregon — having just attended The One Motorcycle Show. I say hopefully because the Polar Vortex dumped a bunch of cold fluffy white stuff on the ground on Friday, and the Portlandians have been calling it a snowmageddon ever since they slowly began littering the streets with stranded vehicles.
The weather may have been wreaking havoc on the highways and in town, Portland is after all where Volvo station wagons go to die, but it didn’t keep the hordes of motorcycle fans away from the show — in fact, some intrepid souls even road their way to the packed two-floor exhibit.
As one can expect from the Portland motorcycle scene, the atmosphere was hipster-chic, and laden with PBR cans, form fitting jeans, and epic beards.
Not exactly our cup of tea here at Asphalt & Rubber (I wore my best plaid shirt in an effort to blend with the natives, but was easily called out for my blasé attitude towards free-trade coffee), but that’s just fine — we like motorcycles just as much as the next guy or girl, and that’s what it is all about. Right?
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept behind The One Motorcycle Show, the idea is pretty simple and centers around the idea of that one motorcycle that fits all your tw0-wheeled needs and lusts.
It is about bikes that incorporate maybe the best aspects of all the other motorcycle you have ever owned, and represents everything about your two-wheeled life. Needless to say, the resulting builds had some interesting crossovers in style.
The ACU (governing body of motorcycle races in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man) along with the Southern 100 Club (the organization behind the Southern 100 road race on the Isle of Man) have seen it fit to allow electric motorcycles to compete alongside petrol-powered machines at this year’s Southern 100 road race. Booyah!
Accordingly, Darvill Racing will be the first team to enter an electric bike alongside the current crop of internal combustion machines, and will campaign Brammo’s eSuperStock and TTXP2 machine at the other Manx road race.