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Watch the BMW HP4 Race Do Its Thing

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BMW Motorrad is one of the few brands still growing in this motorcycle economy, even in the United States, which is facing another year of doubtful sales increases. That’s no easy task.

Not so easy is also improving upon the BMW S1000RR superbike – a machine that tops the lists of many motorcycle publications, near and far. When you ride the BMW S1000RR, it is easy to see why the Bavarian Bullet is so popular.

The BMW S1000RR is beating the Japanese brands at their own game, offering a 1,000cc inline-four superbike with near-200hp peak horsepower figures, anemic measurements on the scale, and a full-suite of electronics…all with aggressive pricing.

How do you improve on this design? Well, a carbon fiber chassis is certainly one way to start; a WorldSBK-spec 212hp engine certainly helps; and factory-set electronics don’t hurt nothin’ either. In other words, you make the BMW HP4 Race.

There are so many reasons why we should heap praise on BMW Motorrad for building the 2017 BMW HP4 Race, but instead we are just going to let this video from the German brand do the talking.

Does anyone know what the 3asy pricing on the HP4 Race is looking like? What if I use my kidney as a down payment? No, seriously…asking for friend.

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MotoGP

Saturday MotoGP Summary at Austin: Explaining Crashes, And New Rivalries

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There is a move afoot among MotoGP riders to have qualifying changed. Or rather, to have the way the selection is done for Q1 and Q2. A lot of riders have complained about the current system of prequalifying using combined times from FP1 through FP3.

The riders complain that they lose too much time to trying to set a fast lap in each session, just in case conditions change. The current counter proposal from the riders is to use just the FP3 times to select which riders go through to Q2 directly, and allow the teams to spend Friday focusing on setup.

Saturday morning exposed the weakness of such an idea. A combination of cold tires, strong wind, a bumpy track, poor tire selection on Friday night, and the narrow temperature working range of the Michelins saw eight riders crash a total of ten times in FP3.

Alex Rins crashed so heavily he broke both the radius and ulna in his left arm, and put himself out of action for Austin and Jerez, and possibly for Le Mans as well. The rest escaped relatively unscathed, but with many a temper blazing.

Basing passage into Q2 solely on FP3 results was not without risks of its own, Valentino Rossi told the Italian media. “Today, that would have been a stupid idea, because we would have had to take a lot of risks in difficult conditions,” Rossi said.

If there had been a total of ten crashes in a session in which most riders hadn’t pushed to improve their time, how many would have fallen if they had all been pushing to get through to Q2?

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MotoGP

Q&A: Jorge Lorenzo on Developing the Ducati

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This has been a challenging year for Ducati Corse, Jorge Lorenzo, and Andrea Dovizioso. The Desmosedici GP17 is a new platform with a new aerodynamic package, sans winglets, and there have been development challenges along the way.

With a double DNF at Argentina, Ducati was definitely looking for some good news in Austin.

As it turns out, qualifying went better than expected. Lorenzo seemed quite pleased at the end of qualifying, pumping his fist in the air as he entered his garage.

This afternoon, Asphalt & Rubber had a chance to sit down with Lorenzo for a few minutes to discuss the challenges of switching from Yamaha to Ducati, and the difficulty of developing a new MotoGP machine.

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Bikes

Fuller Moto’s Custom Motus MSTR Streetfighter

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The Motus MSTR is a burly beast of a bike. The American-made sport-tourer comes with ergonomics designed to eat up miles of riding, and its 1,650cc V4 engine helps make passing those miles a quite the spirited event.

We have always wondered what the Motous MSTR would be like as a streefighter though – sans the production bike’s sweeping fairings, and with a bit more ‘Merica in its attitude. Now we have a glimpse of that, with Fuller Moto giving the Motus MSTR some customizing love.

If you are a fan of Fuller Moto, then you should find his design on the MSTR both visually appealing and strikingly familiar. The color accents (red, white, and blue…obviously) start with the MSTR’s stock red-painted heads, though don’t stop there.

Just in case there was any question about the Motus / Fuller Moto collaboration being all show and no go, the bike puts some impressive 155+ horsepower figures down to the dyno drum, in the attached video.

If you happen to be in Austin for the MotoGP round, you can catch this Motus down at the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show.

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