Honda doesn’t want you to see these photos. I am pretty sure that there is a dark room somewhere on the Suzuka Circuit facility, possibly guarded by Yakuza henchmen, where they are keeping Steve captive for his misdeeds in bringing you the detailed photos we are about to show you.
This is how seriously HRC is taking this year’s Suzuka 8-Hours.
“Win at all costs” is the mantra being used by the Red Bull Honda team, which will field PJ Jacobsen, Takaaki Nakagami, and Takumi Takahashi at this year’s edition of the race. Their goal is simple: to restore honor to the company, and win the most prestigious race on the Japanese calendar.
To do this, Honda has built a special machine. A one-off superbike, this Honda CBR1000RR SP2 was designed to race at only one race track, for only one race, for only three riders. This Honda represents everything that HRC knows about making an endurance racing machine.
As you can imagine then, while this story starts with a bit of hyperbole, it isn’t far from reality.
Outside of Europe, we doubt we could find many motorcyclists who would know which team is currently leading the FIM Endurance World Championship. We will save you the struggle, and tell you outright that it is the F.C.C. TSR Honda France squad.
Technical Sports Racing (TSR), is based out of Japan, but is partnered with Honda France for endurance racing, hence the name. From Europe, they have launched an assault on the 2018 FIM Endurance World Championship, with riders Josh Hook, Freddy Foray, and Alan Techer.
Each season, TSR is a team to watch, and this year is no different.
It is of note however that F.C.C. TSR Honda has never won the EWC title, but they go into the Suzuka 8-Hours with a 10-point advantage over the GMT94 Yamaha outfit – and TSR does have a winning history at Suzuka.
The 2006, 2011, and 2012 winners of the Suzuka 8-Hours, the F.C.C. TSR Honda France team is vying for the championship on its home turf, as the Suzuka Circuit is just a handful of kilometers from its Japanese base of operations.
Episode 82 of the Two Enthusiasts Podcast is out, and in it we talk mostly about track days, new riders, and the mental process of going fast on a motorcycle.
The show isn’t so much of a how-to for track days, as it is more of an hour-long philosophical discussion about riding motorcycles around a race track.
From there, we finish up with some news items, like Dani Pedrosa’s retirement, Yamaha’s mid-sized Niken, the lack of a Triumph Daytona 765, Ducati Streetfighter V4 rumors, a duo of new Kawasaki sport bikes (ZX-6R & ZX-10RR), BMW’s new superbike, and some racing gossip.
Lastly, we remember William Dunlop and James Cowton, who lost their lives road racing recently. Our thoughts are with their family and friends.
You can listen to the show via the embedded SoundCloud player, after the jump, or you can find the show on iTunes (please leave a review) or this RSS feed. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well.
We hope you will join the conversation, and leave us some audio comments at our new email address: twoenthusiasts@gmail.com.
Do you want further proof that the supersport segment isn’t dead? I mean, besides the fact that both Suzuki and Kawasaki have plans to released new 600cc sport bikes later this year, for 2019?
Our Bothan spies have been hard at work in Noale, and they bring us word of a project brewing at Aprilia: a two-cylinder supersport model, that should debut for the 2020 model year.
The concept for this new model is pretty simple: take the class-leading Aprilia RSV4 superbike (which is also set for an update in 2019), lop off the rear cylinders, thus making it a parallel-twin engine. Boom goes the dynamite.
A Revelation is coming…and by that, I mean Harley-Davidson’s awkwardly named electric motorcycle, which is due to debut in roughly one year’s time from now.
The Bar & Shield brand stunned the motorcycling masses when it brought out its Project Livewire demo bikes, showing that the iconic American brand was seriously considering an electric motorcycle model.
Now, Project Livewire is to become the Harley-Davidson Revelation, and the folks in Milwaukee are looking for some help in bringing that bike to market, posting a number of job opportunities online for those who want to work on the electric bike.
Along with the more typical roles that one would see at a motorcycle company — e.g. chassis engineers, infotainment designers, suspension gurus, etc — Harley-Davidson is also looking for some folks to fill its EV ranks.
Elected on a platform to do away with regulatory interference, especially Obama-era fuel economy targets, the Trump Administration is now looking to end California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act.
Ending the waiver effectively means that the United States would finally have a unified set of regulations for vehicles emissions and fuel efficiency standards, as California (through the California Air Resources Board) often sets higher requirements, through its Clean Air Act waiver.
Looking to gut the regulatory force of CARB, this news would also mean that vehicle makers would have lower targets to hit for gas mileage efficiency (37mpg instead of 46.8mpg), which in turn means that brands would have to sell fewer electric vehicles as well.
Lastly, under the proposed changes, vehicle emission standards would freeze at the planned 2020 levels, until the year 2026.
The Suzuka 8-Hours endurance race kicks off this week, with the racing action coming to us this weekend. The final stop on the FIM Endurance World Championship calendar, Suzuka also happens to be the endurance race that all the Japanese manufacturers want to win.
To put Suzuka into perspective, this race means more to Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha than the Motegi round of MotoGP.
It means more than any domestic championship, the World Superbike Championship, and possibly even the MotoGP Championship as well. For the Big Four, this is big business.
It is no surprise then that we are seeing three official one-off factory teams entering this year’s Suzuka race, on top of the bevy of factory supported squads already in the FIM EWC paddock.
With so much on the line this year, Asphalt & Rubber will have boots on the ground for the 2018 Suzuka 8-Hours, bringing you content every day from this truly unique race in Japan.
I first rode a Zero back in 2009. It was a horrible machine. It was so bad, I don’t even dare call it a motorcycle – the execution on that goal was just too far off the mark to warrant calling that creation a motorcycle.
For an example of this, I remember going for a ride on an early Zero S and the on/off switch was marked in sharpie, right on the frame.
The brakes were like wooden blocks attached to the wheels, which didn’t matter much because the tires were cheap rubber from China that were absolutely useless (and terrifying) in the rain.
It wouldn’t take long to learn that Zero’s focus on lightweight components was a bad decision as well, as we would see frames on the dirt bike models collapsing when taken over any sort of jump.
The bikes from Zero were so bad, the product reviews on them could serve as a litmus test of who in the media was bought and paid for, and who was actually speaking truth to power.
These machines were objectively awful, and anyone telling you otherwise was getting paid – straight up.
I could probably go on and on about the quality issues of these early machines, but it would rob us time from discussing the constant management issues that Zero has faced in the past decade, its failed dealership and servicing model, not to mention just the general branding issue of calling your product a “Zero”.
To their credit though, the folks at Zero have improved their product with each successive iteration. The management team finally seems to be stable; Zero now uses a traditional dealership model, and isn’t wasting time sending technicians all over the country in a van; and well…the branding is still tough, but there is a new corporate logo.
Most importantly though, Zero’s motorcycles are actually now motorcycles. The quality of these machines has improved dramatically, and generally the bikes are fun to ride.
So what is keeping me from putting a Zero in my garage, and using that massive electric torque to put a grin on my face? The answer is right there above these words, in the lead photo of this story.
For the 2019 World Superbike Championship season, we will see Leon Haslam lining up alongside teammate Jonathan Rea in the factory-backed Kawasaki Racing Team.
The announcement became officially official today, but it has been a long time coming from Kawasaki. Parting ways with Tom Sykes earlier this month, Haslam’s signing has been rumored in the WorldSBK paddock for many weeks now.
The American motorcycle industry continues to soften, as Harley-Davidson has reported its Q2 2018 sales were down 6.4% in the United States.
That loss translated into a noticeable drop in Harley-Davidson’s total sales, which were down 3.6% for Q2, though it should be noted that international sales were in fact up, 0.7% over the same time period.
This translates into 46,490 Harley-Davidson motorcycles sold in the USA for Q2, with 78,428 bikes sold in total around the world. For the first half of the year though, sales results for Harley-Davidson are looking even worse.