One of the winningest supermoto teams on the FIM circuit, Luc1 Motorsport also happens to be one of the most talented teams at promoting itself on the internet.
While 2014 was a difficult year for Luc1, especially in the FIM S1 class, the team draws some positives from the season. For us, it means some awesome supermoto footage of racers backing it in, clearing jumps, and banging handlebars. Enjoy, after the jump!
At the last meeting of the Superbike Commission, the body which makes the rules for the World Superbike series, representatives of Dorna, the FIM and the factories agreed a number of measures which provide yet another step on the path to the future of the series.
There were a couple of minor technical updates, and two changes which point the way to the series’ long term future.
The changes to the technical regulations were relatively simple. The balancing rules, aimed at allowing different engine designs to be competitive against each other, received a number of minor tweaks resulting from the fact that those rules will now be carried on from one season to the next.
In practice, this means that results for either twins or fours will be carried over between seasons, creating a rolling balancing scoreboard, which should create a better balance between fours and twins.
The other change to the technical rules allow a manufacturer to revert to their 2014 electronics for the first two races of 2015, should the 2015 electronics cause them problems.
Basically, this will give the teams a fallback position and give them a little more time to develop the electronics. As the first two rounds are in Australia and Thailand, the risk of struggling with a system which is not completely ready to race during a period when it is impossible to test has been reduced.
The changes to the sporting regulations are more interesting, and point the way to the future of the series.
Dunlop is set to continue as single tire supplier to the Moto2 and Moto3 classes. In a press release (shown below), Dorna announced that they have extended the current contract with Dunlop to remain as the spec-tire supplier to the support classes, for the 2015 season and beyond.
The press release does not make any mention of the duration of the contract, stating only that Dunlop will continue “from the start of 2015”.
Dunlop has been the spec tire supplier to both Moto2 and Moto3 since the introduction of the two classes, in 2010 and 2012 respectively. The announcement that they are to continue signals that both series will continue with a spec tire for the foreseeable future.
However, the intermediate classes had been a de facto spec series for a long time, with Dunlop supplying almost the entire field in the 250cc and 125cc classes which preceded Moto2 and Moto3.
The 2014 World Endurance Championship was action-packed from round-to-round, and at the end of the season, it was Yamaha Racing GMT 94 Michelin Yamalube team with that surprised the field with 141 championship points (SERT: 104pts, Bollinger 100pts), for the Championship win.
Team riders David Checa, Kenny Foray, and Mathieu Gines finished second at the series opener at Bol d’Or. The team also had a strong 9th place finish at Suzuka, the third fastest full-time team at the Japanese race. At both Germany and Le Mans, Yamaha Racing GMT 94 team podiumed in second place — solidifying its Championship position through consistency.
Left uncleaned from its Le Mans finish, GMT 94’s endurance-spec Yamaha YZF-R1 is off to the museum…the French take the EWC very seriously. You can believe that Honda, Kawasaki, and Suzuki will be looking to give Yamaha a proper run at the Championship defense in 2015.
Having just finished production on the 2015 MotoMatters Motorcycle Racing Calendar, the 2014 season has been on my mind quite a bit over the past several weeks. So I thought I’d take look back at the MotoGP images I contributed here at Asphalt & Rubber and add a bit of perspective to each one.
When the minutes of the latest meeting of MotoGP’s ruling body, the Grand Prix Commission, were unveiled, there was one passage which confused many who read it.
The press release included a paragraph on the spec software which is to be adopted for all MotoGP bikes from the start of the 2016 season. The passage read as follows:
It was already announced that Factory teams in the MotoGP class must move to using unified software with effect from 01 July 2015. It has now been confirmed that different teams, using machines from the same Factory, may use different versions of the unified software.
The wording seemed to suggest that from 2016, factory teams would still be allowed to use a different version of the ECU software to that used by satellite and private teams.
We are six months away from the start of the 2015 Isle of Man TT, which for fans and media seems like an eternal amount of time, but for the organizers and competitors, the waiving of the green flag must surely seem like the event is rapidly approaching.
The off-season posturing is already in full-swing, with Michael Dunlop and BMW Motorrad seemingly parting ways, despite a very productive 2014 season. Instead Guy Martin will be on the German brand, perhaps giving him his best shot at a TT race win ever.
No one can count out John McGuinness, of course, as he looks to top Joey Dunlop’s outright TT race-win record. McPint is a contender in every class he enters, though his best hopes are surely in the electric class, where Team Mugen is the outfit to beat.
The electric bikes will be looking to lap 120 mph on the Isle this year, which is proper fast — no matter what standard you use — and puts those top competitors will be in supersport-pace territory.
Perhaps the most intriguing motorcycle to come from the Bavarian brand this year, the BMW S1000XR is the German company’s response to the rapidly growing “Adventure-Sport” segment.
Going head-to-head with the Ducati Multistrada 1200, we have been eagerly waiting to see how the BMW staked up against the Italian machine on pricing, and now we have our answer.
KTM has been the highest volume producing European motorcycle company for the past two years running, and zie Austrians are looking to make that a trend in 2014.
As such, the Austrian brand will has some stiff competition this year, seeing as BMW Motorrad already broke last year’s sales figure in the first 11 months of this year — an impressive feat, to be certain.
KTM has the advantage of dabbling in small-displacement machines, with KTM-branded bike coming out of India, courtesy of its minority owner Bajaj. The Indian market has been a larger contributor to KTM’s sales success, but things have been growing in Austria as well.
Announcing that the company’s Mattighofen factory reach 100,000 units this year, for the first time ever, KTM is already celebrating some sales success.
Triumph is recalling 2,180 units of its Triumph Tiger Explorer 1200 adventure-bikes, models from 2011 to 2014. The recall comes about because the side-stand pivot bolt may fracture, which could cause the Explorer to fall over, and possibly injure someone nearby.
The meeting of the Grand Prix Commission, held on Tuesday in Madrid, made a number of minor changes to the rules for all three Grand Prix classes, as well as a couple of more significant revisions.
The biggest changes concerned the setting of the maximum fuel allocation from 2016 at 22 liters, and the adoption of the SCAT3 test for concussion for riders after a crash. But perhaps the most significant outcome of the meeting of the GPC is not what was decided, but what was not.
Of the various minor rule changes, a few are worthy of comment. The first is the reduction of the time penalty at the start for a rider exceeding the engine allocation in any given year.
From 2015, anyone using an extra engine will start the race from pit lane 5 seconds after the green light is displayed after the official start (once all riders on the grid have passed pit lane exit), rather than 10 seconds.
This will have little direct impact on the outcome of any races, but should make it easier for riders using an extra engine to get close to the backmarkers, and perhaps score a point or two.