Go to any motorcycle racing club, and you will surely see a fleet of Suzuki SV650 race bikes. The 650cc v-twin sport bike has been a mainstay for track enthusiasts and sport bikers alike for over two decades. The bike is an icon.
And yet, the venerable Suzuki SV650 finds itself under attack from all sides, no more so than by Suzuki’s Japanese rival Yamaha, which now has a two-pronged approach with its MT-07 and YZF-R7 offerings.
Earlier this week, I wrote an article setting out why I think that Marc Márquez is the favorite to win at the Sachsenring. What the riders told the media on Thursday at the Sachsenring merely cemented the Repsol Honda rider’s status as front runner.
Despite his entirely mediocre results since his return to racing, Márquez was identified as at least a potential podium candidate by just about anyone you asked.
Should this be a surprise? Not when you consider that, as veteran US journalist Dennis Noyes pointed out to me, Marc Márquez has quite the record at anticlockwise circuits, tracks with more left handers than rights.
How good? He wins nearly 7 out of every 10 races he starts at a track which mainly turns left.
Episode 216 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show previews the upcoming German GP at Sachsenring.
On the mics, we have Steve English, David Emmett, and Adam Wheeler, as they get us ready for the on-track action coming this weekend.
Episode 66 of the Brap Talk motorcycle podcast is out with another “weekly” episode, for your two-wheeled listening pleasure.
In this episode, we take a look at MotoCorsa’s interesting ADV riding course for Ducati owners (and non-Ducati owners alike), which took place last weekend.
Today, the Gresini Racing Team announced that their immediate future lies with Ducati.
The Italian team, now run by Nadia Padovani, the widow of team’s founder Fausto Gresini, will lease Ducati Desmosedici machines from the Bologna factory for the 2022 and 2023 MotoGP seasons.
Suzuki’s lineup of “new” motorcycles continues to be iterations on established machines, and the 2022 Suzuki GSX-S1000 does not deviate from that plan.
That being said, the updated streetfighter brings a number of refinements to the GSX-S1000 name, along with some distinct styling choices.
The world’s fourth most-populous country is set to mandate that new motorcycle sales be only electric by 2040, so says Arifin Tasrif, Indonesia’s Minister for Energy & Mineral Resources.
The move comes as Indonesia aims to reduce its notable air pollution, and is part of a larger plan that will see on new-car sales reduced to only electrics by 2050, with the government planning incentives to make citizens switch from internal combustion engines.
Episode 211 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one is a WorldSBK show, which means that this one sees Steve English and Gordon Ritchie on the mics.
The pair talk about the WorldSBK round at Misano, and the superbike racing action that ensued at the Italian track.
Since the beginning of the season, the media has been buzzing with HRC’s tales of woe. After seven rounds, the factory sits fifth in the manufacturers championship, 91 points behind Yamaha and Ducati (who are tied for first place), and just 10 points ahead of Aprilia.
To put that into perspective, all four Honda riders – Marc Márquez, Pol Espargaro, Alex Márquez, and Takaaki Nakagami – have contributed to Honda’s total of 52 points, while Aprilia’s stopgap second rider, promoted tester Lorenzo Savadori, has added just a single, solitary point to Aprilia’s total, Aleix Espargaro having scored the other 44.
The situation for the Repsol Honda team is, if anything, even worse.
With a lineup of popular choices for sport bike enthusiasts, Pirelli is now bringing out the next generation of its street-focused tires, debuting the Pirelli Diablo Rosso IV.
As the name implies, the tire is the successor to the venerable Diablo Rosso III, which is billed as a performance street tire for sport bike riders, suitable for mixed weather conditions and higher mileage uses.
The Rosso III sat below the Diablo Rosso Corsa II tire (one of our favorite street tires) in terms of performance, with the DRC2 being a street tire that also performs well on the race track.
The engineers at Honda are busy looking at the future of how we will ride on two wheels, and their latest creation is a clutch-by-wire system for motorcycles, first spotted by the eagle eyes at Cycle World.
Similar to how a brake-by-wire system works, the clutch actuation begins by measuring the pressure applied to the clutch lever by the rider, and then sends an electronic signal to a slave cylinder, which replicates and applies that force on the clutch, either engaging or disengaging it.