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April 2015

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Dani Pedrosa will not be racing at the Jerez round of MotoGP. Despite the optimism displayed by Repsol Honda team principal Livio Suppo earlier this week, a test ride on a supermoto bike showed that Pedrosa’s arm is not recovered sufficiently for him to be able to ride.

The Spaniard announced the news on his blog on the Repsol website. He wrote there that he had ridden a supermoto bike to test his arm, and that though the riding had gone well, it gave problems after riding, Pedrosa describing it as “not 100%”.

Harley-Davidson has issued a recall with the NHTSA that affects 45,901 motorcycles, all of which might have a faulty clutch master cylinder that doesn’t have enough force to disengage the clutch, especially if the motorcycle hasn’t been operated in a while.

The recall affects the following models, all of which were manufactured between April 28th, 2014, and October 24th, 2014: Electra Glide Ultra Classic, Electra Glide Ultra Classic – Twin Cooled, Ultra Limited, Police Electra Glide, Street Glide, Street Glide Special, CVO Street Glide, Electra Glide Ultra Classic Low, Ultra Limited Low, Electra Glide Ultra Classic Low – Twin Cooled, Road Glide Special, Road Glide, and CVO Road King.

We already know that Troy Bayliss will be making another return to racing this year, taking on five one-mile events on the AMA Pro Grand National Series. We also knew that Bayliss would be on a Lloyd Brothers Motorsports Ducati race bike, continuing the Australian’s link to the Italian brand.

Ducati has given us a glimpse of that flat-tracking machine, and to our surprise, it seems the folks in Bologna are looking to get some more marketing mileage out of the partnership, as Troy’s race bike is a spitting image of the Ducati Scrambler Full Throttle.

It appears that both Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa will attempt to ride at Jerez this weekend.

Dani Pedrosa will get his first chance to ride a MotoGP bike after having radical surgery to cure a persistent arm pump problem. Meanwhile, Marc Marquez has just had surgery to plate a broken proximal phalanx in the little finger of his left hand.

Speaking to the Italian website GPOne.com, HRC Team Principal Livio Suppo said that he expected both riders to be present at Jerez, and to test their fitness during practice on Friday.

Any MotoGP can tell you that Alpinestars is one of the few brands making integrated airbag suits available to racers — perhaps one of the best safety features to come out thus far in the 21st century for motorcyclists.

How to take that technology off the track and onto the street though is a a tough proposition though, as there are infinitely more variable at play on public roads, when compared to a race course. Hence, we’ve had to wait a long time for this tech to trickle down to the masses.

The current trend of thinking seems for apparel manufacturer to partner with motorcycle manufacturers, as a way to popularize the expensive safety feature.

As such, rival apparel-maker Dainese has already made a very public deal with Ducati, which lead to the Ducati Multistrada 1200 D-Air, and the Vicenza-based company has (had?) other less-public deals in place, with companies like BMW.

It seems Alpinestars wants in on that action too, and has now signed an exclusive partnership deal with BMW Motorrad, which will see the German manufacturer and Italian maker enter into cooperation on designing and making jackets with the Alpinestars Tech-Air technology.

Marc Marquez has broken a finger in his left hand in a dirt track training crash.

The reigning world champion fell heavily, suffering a displaced fracture of the proximal phalange in the little finger of his left hand. This means that the bone between the hand and the first knuckle was broken, and the two parts of the bone moved.

Marquez was taken immediately to the Dexeus Institute in Barcelona, where Dr. Xavier Mir, who performs surgery on many of the top MotoGP and WSBK riders, operated on the Spaniard.

The bone was put together again and then fixed with a titanium plate. Marquez is due to start functional recovery within 24 hours.

The press release issued by Honda is strangely hesitant about Marquez’s prospects of racing at Jerez.

Motorcyclists living in the fine State of Oregon (this author included) have something to celebrate today, as the Oregon State Senate passed SB 694 (18 to 10, with two abstentions): proposal that would make lane-filtering or lane-sharing legal under certain conditions.

The bill now goes before the Oregon House of Representatives, where it will be first heard on April 27th. If voted on successfully in the House, Oregon will become only the second state to permit lane-filtering of some kind on public roads.

While today’s news is a boon for motorcyclists in Oregon, there are some serious caveats to the bill that has passed through the Senate, namely that it only permits lane-sharing during specific instances.

Harley-Davidson’s Q1 2015 sales reports are in, and the Bar & Shield brand is reporting a 1.3% drop in unit volume sales, despite posting a $4 million increase in net income over last year ($269.9 million in Q1 2015).

Equally surprising is that the increase in net income comes despite a $60 million decrease in revenue ($1.67 billion in Q1 2015), which Harley-Davidson attributes to the growing currency divide between the dollar and the euro.

Harley-Davidson is using the currency issue, which in theory drives up the cost of American products abroad and allows foreign producers to discount in the USA, as a reason to adjust its year-end sales forecast, which the company now pegs at 2% to 4%, rather than 4% to 6%.

It’s been a long time since The Netherlands had a rider to cheer for as a nation, but Michael van der Mark is changing that. At just 22-years-old, Van der Mark is not only the reigning World Supersport Champion, but he also currently sits 7th in the World Superbike Championship, with the Pata Honda squad.

Don’t let his young age fool you, the Dutchman is all business on the track, most recently grabbing two podiums at his home round in Assen — an impressive feat for any true WSBK rookie.

Equally impressed with their rider, HRC Europe has put together a nice video that features and introduces the young man beneath the helmet, who will also be Casey Stoner’s teammate at the upcoming Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race.

We expect big things from Michael van der Mark over the course of his two-wheeled racing career. Remember his name, you’ll surely be hearing it more and more often in the winner’s circle.

Reports out of Italy suggest that the Marzocchi brand may soon be no more, after parent company Tenneco made the decision to close the Italian firm’s Bologna factory in Zola Predosa.

The Italain outlets go on to say that motorcycle manufacturers that use Marzocchi as an OEM part have been notified that they will no longer be supplied with the suspension pieces, once the co Marzocchi’s stock of forks has been exhausted from supply.

This news would affect a bevy of brands, including BMW, Ducati, MV Agusta, TM, GasGas, Beta, and AJP.

Can you ever have too much motorcycle racing? You can if the amount of racing over one weekend actually exceeds the number of hours in each day.

That was pretty much the case last weekend, when we MotoGP at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit in Argentina, World Superbikes – including World Supersport, FIM Superstock 1000, the European Superstock 600 Championship, and the European Junior Cup – at Assen, British Superbikes at Brands Hatch (the very short, very fast Indy circuit, not the longer GP layout), the second round of the inaugural MotoAmerica series at Road Atlanta, and the 24 hour race at Le Mans in France.

Looking beyond motorcycle road racing, there was also the fourth round of the MXGP motocross world championship at Trentino in Italy, and a Formula One race at Bahrain.

Although the constraints of long seasons mean that there will always be clashes, this was a little ridiculous. Racing series are not completely free to set their calendars as they wish – they are tied down by a host of factors such as track availability, the weather, other events organized at the circuits, local government permission and many, many others – this weekend was one of the more spectacular scheduling SNAFUs. Let us hope this can be avoided next year.

For the upcoming weekend, the calendar is much more limited. The FIM Repsol CEV championship – what we used to know as the Spanish championship – has its first race at Portimao in Portugal.

The field is as varied as ever, with riders from all over Europe and Asia, as well as an Australian and an American in Moto3, an even more varied field in Moto2 – including exotica such as the Vyrus, ridden by British youngster Bradley Ray – and Barcelona-based American rider Kenny Noyes defending his title in the Superbike class.

Their Italian counterpart, the CIV championship, also kicks off this weekend with their first races at Misano. Both series will be streamed live, CEV on their Youtube channel, and the CIV via a specialist Italian motorsports channel called Sportube.