We are creatures of habit in the paddock. After having had our biorhythms put out of whack by a wild and weird Thursday, having bikes on the track on Friday brought us all back into line, and restored a sense of normality to MotoGP.
This was a race weekend once again, and the arguments and backbiting have been put aside for a moment.
Though the return of racing motorcycles going fast around a circuit brought some joy back to the paddock, the day was also tinged with sadness. Two events punctuated the day, celebrating two mighty monuments of the paddock, who depart for pastures new.
At lunchtime, Nicky Hayden was inducted as a MotoGP Legend, with a ceremony and a brief press conference. In the evening, Bridgestone held an official soiree to take their leave of the paddock, as they ended their role of official tire supplier.
Earlier this year we showed you the Honda CRF250 Rally concept, the 250cc production equivalent to Honda’s rally raid competition machine, the Honda CRF450 Rally.
That machine appears ready to move from concept to reality, as Honda has trademarked the name in both Europe and the USA, and we expect to see the lightweight adventure bike drop, sooner rather than later.
We have been talking a lot lately about the Yamaha MWT-9, the three-wheel leaning FZ-09 concept that debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show; and we have also talked a bit about the Yamaha “Sports Ride” concept, a sport car that Yamaha was also showing off in Tokyo.
So hoping to leave no stone unturned, Yamaha has created something that takes from the highlights of both of those concepts – the Japanese call it the Yamaha OR2T, a four-wheel leaning motorcycle…thing.
The Yamaha OR2T is about as close to the Yamaha Tesseract, which debuted in 2007, that we have seen in the living flesh; and honestly, it looks pretty damn awesome.
We got out first look at the KTM RC16 last week, the Austrian company’s MotoGP race bike that will debut in 2017, along with a customer version that will cost around €140,000.
The RC16 draws some serious inspiration from the Honda RC213V, with its whale-shark air intake design, underbraced swingarm, 90° V4 engine with a “screamer” piston firing order. There are of course obvious differences, with the KTM RC16 having steel trellis frame, WP suspension pieces, and 17″ wheels.
Alex Hofmann took the reigns of the KTM RC16 at its three-day shakedown test at the Red Bull Ring, but soon development duties will be handed over to former-MotoGP rider Mika Kallio, with a second test that is scheduled for this year.
Dani Pedrosa continued his recent fine form to finish Day 1 with the second fastest time.
Jorge Lorenzo was all smiles at the start of FP2.
Andrea Iannone was third fastest today at Valencia.
Thursday at Valencia was one of the strangest days in MotoGP that I have known since I first started covering the sport professionally. Maybe it’s just the fact that the usual schedule was disrupted.
Every race weekend has a rhythm: on Thursday, it’s a late start, then rider debriefs, then a press conference, then work; on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it’s an early start, watch practice, rider debriefs/press conferences and then work.
That rhythm was wildly out of sync at Valencia. Earlier start, Moto3 press conference, HRC press conference, a couple of rider debriefs.
Then an unnatural lull, as the riders headed into the press conference room for their meeting with the Permanent Bureau, consisting of Dorna boss Carmelo Ezpeleta and FIM president Vito Ippolito addressed the MotoGP riders and their team managers.
Ten minutes after the riders started streaming through the paddock on their way to the meeting, they were all heading back out again.
What happened in the meeting with the Permanent Bureau? The first rule of meeting with the Permanent Bureau is don’t talk about meeting with the Permanent Bureau, apparently, as no one was willing to tell us about it, apart from some platitudes from Jorge Lorenzo about it being interesting to get different perspectives from people to get new ideas. Not that anyone truly believed that the riders came out with new ideas, but still.
What they must have talked about in the rider meeting was to move on from Sepang and focus on events at Valencia. Nobody, none of the riders involved, had any interest in going over the events of Sepang again, and so they did not really need to be told twice.
There was a suspicion – and I stress, it was nothing more than that – that the Honda and Yamaha riders had all been told not to comment on events, and to put it behind them.
That is probably smart advice, but it left the journalists (of which there were a colossal number at Valencia) feeling frustrated. There was much to ask: had anyone changed their minds, or their positions, after having time to look back at the footage again?
Italian magazine Motociclismo has what it says are the first spy shots of the rumored Ducati Scrambler 400, the small-displacement sibling to the current Ducati Scrambler.
While normally it is easy to distinguish a new motorcycle model when it’s on the street, the photos from Motociclismo offer us little insight into how the Scrambler 400 is different from its 803cc kin. Checkout the photos on Motociclismo.it, and you will see what we mean.
This would suggest that we can expect to see a very familiar looking motorcycle make its debut at EICMA in two weeks’ time, with the most noticeable different being the Scrambler 400’s lack of upside-down forks.
Benelli is very much the forgotten Italian marque in the motorcycle industry, with Ducati, MV Agusta, and Aprilia (in that order, perhaps) taking most of the attention when it comes to motorcycle that hail from a country shaped like a boot.
The brand has made some fantastic modern models, like the Tornado, TnT, and Tre, and of course Benelli is steeped in a rich history that has some classic motorcycles. Those are the elements that have always attracted us to the brand, and what keeps us longing for more from Benelli.
However, ownership under the Qianjiang Group has proved difficult for motorcycle enthusiasts, with the company’s sexy Italian-designed motorcycles giving way to practical simple people movers. The Benelli TnT25 proves that point.
It seems though that things are slowly coming around for Benelli and its Chinese owners though, with the Italian-born brand sending the above teaser with the message “The Legend is back…” So we dug a little deeper.
The 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R might just be an “update” to the WSBK Championship winning superbike, but Team Green has put enough new tech and features into the machine to get us pretty excited about its debut.
Boasting a revised chassis and motor, more electronics, more aerodynamic fairings, Kawasaki not only surprised us, and the rest of the motorcycle media, with its the midlife model refresh, but we think Kawasaki surprised even themselves with the machine, making a bike that potential-R1 buyers will definitely have to consider when they make a trip down to their local dealership.
Team Green has changed so much on the 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R that we will let them list all the changes in the video, after the jump. If you can get past the techno music and hyperbole, it is actually pretty interesting.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport has rejected Valentino Rossi’s request for a stay of his penalty, given to him at Sepang. The three-point penalty, handed to him at Sepang for the incident he was involved in with Marc Marquez, means he will start from the back of the grid for the final race of the season at Valencia.
Rossi will still be entitled to participate in Q2, if he finishes in the top ten after the three sessions of free practice, but the position he secures in Q2 will not count for his grid position. Everyone who qualifies behind him will be moved forward one position on the grid.