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Honda CRF250 Rally Concept Breaks Cover in Japan

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Adventure riders, you prayers have been answered. Honda is set to debut a new off-road model at the Osaka Motorcycle Show, the Honda CRF250 Rally.

Based off the Honda CRF250L platform, the Rally concept is basically the CRF250L with rally-styled bodywork.

The Honda CRF250 Rally concept will get its worldwide debut alongside the Honda True Adventure concept, which we first saw at last year’s EICMA show.

This makes for an interesting dichotomy, as the CRF250 Rally is set to look like the CRF450 Rally race bike, while the True Adventure (cough, Africa Twin, cough) borrows heavily from the race bike’s technology package.

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Bikes

Honda SFA Concept Gets Japanese Debut

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After it first debuted in Indonesia last October, the Honda SFA concept motorcycle seems to be getting serious, as Honda will be showing the up-market bike at this weekend’s Osaka Motorcycle Show and next weekend’s Tokyo Motorcycle Show.

While Honda only mentions that the SFA concept is a “street-fighter style light-weight motorcycle with a single cylinder engine mounted on a trellis frame,” sources in Indonesia say the fetching small-displacement machine is built around the 150cc CB150R for that market.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Qatar Test Summary – Day 3: No Action, Just Rain

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The final day of testing for the MotoGP class at Qatar ended as a washout. The rain did not lift, as many had hoped, and no action took place on track. The entire day was lost to the weather.

It had started raining much earlier in the day, and light rain was falling as teams arrived at the track ready for a 4pm start. It had been hoped that the rain would stop and the track might dry out. Unfortunately for the teams, the rain did not stop, getting worse in the end, and a thunderstorm rolling in.

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Racing

Bimota Racing at IOMTT with American Brandon Cretu

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Italy’s favorite boutique brand will be back at the Isle of Man TT races this year, with a two rider team that includes American Brandon Cretu.

Cretu and his teammate Ben Wylie will campaign for Bimota at the big four road races (North West 200, Isle of Man TT, Ulster Grand Prix, and Macau GP) on-board the Bimota BB3 superbike.

This is not the first time that Cretu and Wylie have raced together, having shared a pit while at the Wylie Racing team during the 2011 and 2012 Isle of Man TT races.

Though the Bimota BB3 was ruled ineligible for FIM events, the international road racing scene has no hang-ups letting the S1000RR-powered superbikes lineup on the starting grid.

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Bikes

MV Agusta F4 RC Leaks Again with More “AMG”

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We are still waiting for the 2015 MV Agusta F4 RC to break cover officially, but the top-of-the-line superbike from Varese continues to make itself sneakily available to the public.

First there were the leaked studio photos, which looked spot-on to the photos MV Agusta USA teased us with at its press launch earlier this year.

Now, we have more photos of the F4 RC leaking, though with some changes to the design — namely more prominent “AMG” badging, for MV Agusta’s newest minority partner.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Qatar Test Summary – Day 2: The GP15 Is for Real, The Rest of the Field is Close

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There are some worried faces in the MotoGP paddock after the second day of the Qatar test. That the Ducati GP15s are fast should come as no surprise, after all, they were fastest on the first day as well.

The trouble is that everyone assumed that the speed of Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone was down to the fact that they can use the soft tire, which is not available to Honda and Yamaha.

Despite the protestations of the two Ducati riders, who had said they spent all day on the medium tire, the same tire which the Hondas and Yamahas had used, Valentino Rossi, among others, had cast aspersions on their claims, suggesting that their fastest laps had been set on the soft tire.

They weren’t. Ducati’s official press release stated explicitly that the two Andreas had not gone anywhere near the soft tire so far, concentrating on improving the GP15 on the medium tire, the tire they will race.

Ducati’s press officer confirmed this explicitly to the Bikesportnews website. And just to check, I trawled through all the photos I could find of the factory Ducati team: through the official Ducati press website, through the official MotoGP.com website, and through a couple of other media sites. Not a single photo did I find of a tire with a white stripe, the sign of the soft tire. They really did use the medium tire.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Qatar Test Summary – Day 1: Did Ducati Really Use the Softer Tire to Dominate?

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Did they or didn’t they? That was the question after Ducati dominated the first day of the test at Sepang. Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso spent all day swapping places at the top of the timesheets, Iannone coming out on top at the end.

It was an impressive showing, but MotoGP watchers and Ducati’s rivals were quick to pass judgment: of course the Ducatis were fast, after all, they were allowed to use the soft rear tire, a concession for the Open class teams and factories who have yet to win three races in the dry. That tire is worth six or seven tenths a lap, said Valentino Rossi.

Only they didn’t use the soft tire. At least, that is what Andrea Dovizioso told reporters. He spent all day working on race setup, first on the GP14.3 to set a baseline, and then on the GP15 to work on braking set up and electronics.

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Bikes

Photos: 2015 Suzuki GSX-R1000 Endurance Race Bike

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If there is one team name that is synonymous with winning the FIM Endurance World Championship, it has to be SERT. The Suzuki Endurance Racing Team has won 13 EWC titles in the past three decades, by far the winningest squad on the motorcycle endurance circuit.

Last-year’s runner-up, Suzuki is looking to be back on top for the 2015 season, despite having the oldest racing platform on the starting line — a statement that perhaps highlights the consistency and teamwork that makes SERT a cut above the rest of the World Endurance teams.

Continuing that tradition in 2015 will be riders Vincent Philippe and Anthony Delhalle, who will be joined by their new teammate Etienne Masson.

SERT will test their mettle April 18th, at the 2015 Bol d’Or 24-hour race, but we’ve got a few high-resolution photos of the beautiful EWC-spec 2015 Suzuki GSX-R1000 race bike right here, after the jump.

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MotoGP

Qatar Test Preview – Last Chance to Prepare for 2015

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Who starts the 2015 MotoGP season as favorite for the championship? The final test at Qatar will give us a much clearer picture of where the factories and riders stand than the last two tests in Sepang.

That is in part due to the fact that the factories have had time between the Sepang tests and now to work on further refining their bikes ready for the start of 2015.

But the Qatar test is also a little more representative for the rest of the season than Sepang is. The Malaysian circuit may have a good mix of fast and slow corners, but the tropical heat makes it tough on riders, tough on tires, and the track can lose a lot of grip as the temperatures rise.

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Racing

Daytona 200 Gets Online Streaming

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At first it seemed the only way to watch the Daytona 200 was to be there in-person, but DMG has been able to swing a last-minute deal with FansChoice.tv to bring the internet live streaming of the historic race.

Sanctioned now by the American SportBike Racing Association (ASRA), it is not clear at this time what ASRA’s coverage will include, but the green flag drops at 1pm Eastern Time, Saturday, March 14th — commentary, or not.

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