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July 2016

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Racing Likely to Return to Bonneville Salt Flats This Year

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Racing seems set to return finally to the Bonneville Salt Flats this year, as the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) has found the conditions favorable to run its Speed Week event next month (above is a photo taken of the salt flats, just two weeks ago).

This is good news for land-speed racers, as racing at Bonneville has seen a two-year hiatus because of deteriorating salt conditions in 2014 and 2015.

Now, the SCTA says that it sees the Bonneville Salt Flats as being suitable for three courses – an 8-mile “long course”, 5-mile “short course”, and a 3-mile “rookie course” – and has begun prepping the salt for its Speed Week event next month.

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News

Skully Investors Oust Founders, Marcus & Mitch Weller

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TechCrunch is reporting, and our sources have confirmed, that the investors behind the Skully AR-1 helmet have ousted one of the company’s founders, Marcus Weller, along with his brother Mitch Weller. For those who don’t know, Marcus Weller was Skully’s CEO, while Mitch Weller served as the company’s Chief of Staff.

The departure of the Weller brothers comes after Skully continually missed its delivery deadlines with its first product, the Skully AR-1, which is a helmet with an integrated rear-facing camera, small computer system, and heads-up-display oculus.

The Skully AR-1 helmet debuted to much fanfare, but it soon became clear that the company’s leadership wasn’t up to the task on delivering the promises they were making to the public. Seemingly on a different page with their investors as well, Marcus and Mitch Weller were fired by the company’s Board of Directors.

It looks like Martin Fitcher, Skully’s current COO, will take over the reigns for the company, or what’s left of it, as its new CEO. Hopefully this means that Skully will finally get on the right path and begin delivery helmets to its plethora of early backers. We are not holding our breath, however.

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WSBK

Laguna Seca World Superbike Debrief: The Boys of Summer

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The WorldSBK season goes on its annual summer break, with the championship suddenly poised on a much finer edge than was imaginable just a week ago.

Jonathan Rea’s dominance of the current campaign has been almost unparalleled. However, his run of 17 consecutive podium finishes to open the season is now over, and suddenly he faces a threat from within for his title defence.

This is because an engine issue left Rea on the sidelines in Race 2 at Laguna Seca, and suddenly his championship lead had been cut to 46 points. It is still a comfortable margin for Rea but suddenly doubt can creep into the “Team 65” side of the Kawasaki garage.

Tom Sykes’ win on Sunday marked a return to the winner’s circle for the former champion, and while he is still an outside bet for the title, he is at least back in realistic range of Rea.

This paints an interesting picture for the WorldSBK riders to consider while they rest over the next two months.

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Bikes

First Teaser of the 2017 Honda CBR250RR Appears

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The Honda CBR250RR is getting closer to breaking cover, with a teaser video of the quarter-liter sport bike coming to us this week from Honda’s Indonesian importer.

The video doesn’t give away too much on its face, but it does confirm the “RR” status of the new bike, and shows that many of the details that we have seen already on the Honda “Light Weight Super Sport” concept have made it into the production machine.

This bodes well for small-displacement motorcycle fans, with the upcoming Honda CBR250RR likely being the bike that many hoped Honda had initially produced, instead of the Honda CBR250R and Honda CBR300R combo.

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MotoGP

Paddock Pass Podcast – Episode 32 – Assen

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Episode 32 of the Paddock Pass Podcast sees Steve and Neil talking about the MotoGP, Moto2, and Moto3 racing at the Dutch TT. The guys talk about the unusual circumstances with the weather, which caused a red flag in the MotoGP race, and had quite the affect on the results.

Steve and Neil also talk a bit about Ducati’s missed opportunities this year in MotoGP, and the real prospects of riders like Alex Rins finding factory seats in the premier class. The show finishes up with a look at the Moto2 Championship, and there is an in-depth briefing on what is going on in Moto3.

Lastly, we get a preview of the World Superbike racing that’s going on at Laguna Seca this week.

The show is a bit later than we would have liked (my fault, and my apologies), but we think you will still find it highly relevant, especially as MotoGP gets ready to go to Sachsenring for the German GP.

As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to the show on iTunes and SoundCloud – we even have an RSS feed for you. If you like the show, we would really appreciate you giving it a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

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MotoGP

XXX: The KTM RC16 MotoGP Bike Testing at Mugello

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If you’re like us, the debut of the KTM RC16 MotoGP race bike cannot come soon enough. The machine will officially be unveiled at the Austrian MotoGP round, which is the first race after MotoGP’s summer break, on August 14th.

We can expect to see the KTM RC16 take its first public hot laps at Valencia later this year (Austria should see some parade laps on the course), the post-season test also being Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro’s first chance to ride the new race bike.

Until all that happens though, we will have to suffice with the testing photos we get from KTM, as test riders Mika Kallio and Tom Luthi continue to hone the V4-powered machine.

If you believe the hype from KTM, the RC16 is a beast – making in the neighborhood of 270hp already.

Making the horsepower might be the easiest part of the project though, as KTM will not only have to ensure that reliability exists in its engine design, but also make sure all that the RC16 can get all that power down to the tarmac.

As such, the KTM RC16 was out spinning laps at Mugello last month. We don’t need much of an excuse to bring you massive high-resolution photos of this machine, so we won’t make you wait any longer.

Enjoy them after the jump, there is a new computer desktop background or two for you in the collection, for sure.

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