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The MV Agusta F4Z Teases Us Again

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MV Agusta continues to tease its collaboration with design house Zagato, with their MV Agusta F4Z set to drop in a couple weeks’ time.

Using yet another teaser video, MV Agusta pulls the curtain back a little further, giving us a better glimpse of the F4Z’s lines, which shows off a very unique sport bike.

Zagato has given the MV Agusta F4 quite the makeover, going from superbike to something closer to a futuristic café racer. We’re not sure how that’s going to play with hardcore MV Agusta fans, but the design partnership is certainly producing some interesting results.

Tell us your thoughts, is the MV Agusta F4Z a yay or a nay? The teaser video (after the jump) is full of fast cuts, so we added some screen captures of the good bits for you.

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MotoGP

Preview of the Czech GP: Titles, Fuel, & Moto3

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It is but a short trip up the road from Spielberg to Brno, but it is a journey between two very different worlds.

From the hyper-modern facility at the Red Bull Ring, to the frayed-around-the-edges buildings of Brno. From a track which has been missing from the calendar for the best part of twenty years to a circuit which has seen racing almost since its inception, where teams often come to test.

From a track with a paucity of corners, all hard braking and acceleration, to one which flows from corner to corner, where bikes mostly exit in third gear when getting on the gas.

The starkest difference between the Red Bull Ring and Brno is the layout. Both tracks snake up and down hillsides, but where Austria is a track stuck up against a mountain, Brno is a winding road which threads its way through hills and vales.

Where Spielberg is basically seven corners, three of which are almost hairpins, all fourteen of Brno’s corners are long and flowing.

Ironically, Brno’s flowing layout makes it somewhat more simple to set up a bike for it. All of the corners are similar, with no camber and needing the same approach.

“The set up is more important than at other tracks because all the corners are similar,” Danilo Petrucci explained to us on Thursday. “You have to be good on braking and especially the feeling of the front. Because for more than 50% of the track you are on the edge of the tire.”

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News

EPA Slaps Harley-Davidson with $12 Million Fine

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have just come to a settlement agreement with Harley-Davidson, which sees the American motorcycle manufacturer agreeing to pay a $12 million fine for its Screamin Eagle “super tuner” devices.

Also in the agreement, Harley-Davidson agrees to spend $3 million to mitigate air pollution (through a project to replace conventional woodstoves with cleaner-burning stoves in local communities), as well as to stop selling, buy back, or destroy any illegal devices that increase air pollution from the company’s motorcycles. Boom goes the dynamite.

While not quite the Dieselgate scandal that caught Volkswagen circumventing EPA emission standards, Harley-Davidson’s “super tuners” do provide an aftermarket solution for motorcyclists to circumvent the emission devices on their motorcycles.

Compounding the issue though, Harley-Davidson has sold an amazing number of these tuners. Accordingly the EPA and DOJ came down on the Bar & Shield brand like a box of bricks, but the likely costs to take the boxes off the market will make the fines pale in comparison.

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Reviews

Gone Riding: Yamaha SCR950

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Hello from Julian, California which is just a stone’s throw away from Southern California’s Palomar Mountain State Park – a local riding Mecca. I’m out here today with Yamaha USA, riding the Yamaha SCR950 – the Japanese company’s “Made for the USA” scrambler model.

The SCR950 is part of Yamaha’s “Sport Heritage” line, and joins bikes like the XSR900 café racer and Yamaha Bolt C-Spec. That latter model is important, as the Yamaha SCR950 is built off the Bolt platform, adding a number of scrambler-styled design cues to the affordable cruiser model.

It’s worth noting that the SCR950 is the first model by Yamaha that has been developed here in the USA, rather than in Japan. As such, its focus is obviously on the American market. Strangely though, its most comparable competitors are all European.

This is becoming a trend for Yamaha, as we saw with the Yamaha FZ-09 and Yamaha FZ-10. The brand from Iwata is making great strides to set itself apart from the other Japanese companies.

We’ve got a full day’s worth of riding to find out. While I’m out on the road, I will try and give you a live assessment of the machine, and answer any questions you might have. So, here’s your chance to learn what it’s like to ride the 2017 Yamaha SCR950, before even my own proper review is posted.

Cellphone reception is pretty spotty here in the mountains, but we’ve got pretty good wifi at the hotel, so I will attempt to answer any questions you post here in the comments and on social media.

As always, if I don’t know an answer, I will try to get a response from the Yamaha personnel that are here with me in North Carolina. So, pepper away.

You can follow our thoughts on the bike live via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also try searching for the hashtags: #Yamaha #SCR950 #SCR950FirstRide for the thoughts of my colleagues as well.

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MotoGP

Moto3: Sky VR46 Fires Romano Fenati

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As expected, Romano Fenati has been formally released from his contract with the Sky VR46 team. The Italian was suspended from the team after an incident at the Red Bull Ring in Austria. That was a temporary measure, but it has now been made permanent.

Fenati was released for behavioral issues. The Italian had been abusive towards members of the team, and had not behaved in a professional manner.

The incident in Austria was just the latest in a long line of breaches of behavioral conduct, which included confirmed reports of verbal abuse and unconfirmed and unsubstantiated reports of physical conflict.

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MotoGP

MotoGP: Aspar Signs Alvaro Bautista for 2017

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The penultimate piece of the 2017 puzzle has fallen into place. Today, the Pull&Bear Aspar team announced that they have signed Alvaro Bautista to race for them for the 2017 season.

The deal had long been anticipated, Bautista confirming at the Sachsenring that he was in talks with Aspar, and expected a contract to be signed.

The final details were sorted out in Austria, and an announcement made the day before the Czech Grand Prix is to get underway in Brno.

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Bikes

Here’s How You Make A Proper-Fast Electric Motorcycle

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It’s been a long-time coming, but customer bikes are starting to roll out of the Alta Motors production facility outside of San Francisco. That’s music to the ears of many patient and eager owners, and we’re pretty excited about it too.

This is because the Alta Motors Redshift SM is a designed to compete against any 250cc supermoto on the market, and the same can be said of the Californian company’s MX model as well, when it comes to motocross duties.

So far, every indication points to the Redshift living up to that promise (A&R will know first-hand, soon enough). Until then though, we’re chewing on this time-lapse video that Alta Motors posted to YouTube.

It’s interesting to see how the Alta Motors crew assembles their production electric motorcycles; but perhaps what is most striking, is the relatively clean and simple design that makes the Redshift come to life.

For a bike powered by batteries and liquid-cooled, there are almost no visible wires or hoses. See for yourself, after the jump.

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MotoGP

Paddock Pass Podcast #35 – Red Bull Ring

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Ducati’s return to MotoGP’s winner’s circle, Johann Zarco’s decimation of the Moto2 field, and how Romano Fenati lost the most-coveted Moto3 ride in the paddock…if we’re talking about all these things then it must be the Austrian GP, and it must be Episode 35 of the Paddock Pass Podcast.

This installment of your two-wheeled racing addiction sees David Emmett, Neil Morrison, Tony Goldsmith, and Scott Jones covering all the major topics from MotoGP’s first stop at the Red Bull Ring, along with some pointed insights.

The Austrian track is officially the fastest circuit on the GP calendar, and unofficially it might be the most picturesque as well. The guys talk about the new venue, and the racing it produced. There’s a lot to cover though, so the show is a healthy hour and thirty minutes. We think you’ll enjoy it though.

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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Bikes

Two New BMW R nineT Models Coming

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Filings with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) suggest that BMW Motorrad has two more variations of its retro-styled motorcycle line coming to the USA: the BMW R nineT Pure and the BMW R nineT Racer.

These two bikes would join the other two air-cooled models we have already seen from the Germans, the base model BMW R nineT and the recently released BMW R nineT Scrambler, which debuted at EICMA last year.

Our friends at Motorcycle.com spotted the CARB filings, and believe one of the machines will be based off the BMW Lac Rose concept – an ADV throw-back to when the Dakar Rally actually raced to Dakar.

The other model though, could be anyone’s guess, as BMW hasn’t dropped any other concepts or hints in the past months.

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Racing

The Peoria TT is Awesome, And You Should Watch It

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To be a truly well-rounded motorcyclist, there are a few things you should do in life, before you go to the big race track in the sky. One of those things is attending the Peoria TT – AMA Pro Flat Track’s most unique round of racing on the calendar.

As the name suggests, the Peoria TT uses a ?-mile TT-style course, rather than an oval. But, what really sets the Peoria TT apart though is the track’s mammoth jump, with its blind landing. It truly separates the wheat from the chaff and is the driving force behind what makes Peoria the iconic race that it has become.

If you didn’t attend this year’s event, don’t worry – you can stream the races from FansChoice.TV right here.

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