After the news that Chilé would be dropped from the 2016 Dakar Rally because of extensive flooding near the course area, the iconic race and its organizers had to go back to the drawing board to find a challenging alternative for The Dakar’s 8th race in South America.
The ASO believes they have done just that, announcing that the 2016 Dakar Rally will go through Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina, with stages in the Andes Mountains being the highlight of rally raid competition.
With the news that Erik Buell Racing has ceased operations and will be headed into receivership, doubt has been cast on the company’s racing efforts in the World Superbike Championship. Allaying some fears, Team Manager and Rider Larry Pegram spoke to the WorldSBK.com website, saying that the team would indeed race in Assen, as planned.
“For Team Hero EBR, nothing has really changed,” Pegram said while speaking to WorldSBK.com. “We are going to be racing this weekend and we plan to continue for the season. All indications are that we are going to be able to do that. There is obviously some restructuring and financial stuff going on in the USA, but we are over here in Assen and getting ready for a good weekend.”
I might be in France right now, but everyone is talking about Austin, Texas. They’re talking about that lap, you know the one I’m talking about…
In case you’re drawing a blank, it’s the one where Marc Marquez’s Honda RC213V throws a warning light and gets abandoned on the front straight as Marquez jumps the pit lane wall, runs back to his #2 bike, and put on a two-lap show for fans.
He was on the wrong bike, with the wrong setup, and the wrong tires. It was not his best lap ever, but it might be his most memorable though.
It shows that you never say die. It shows that the truly great riders overcome the adversity in front of them. It shows that luck is when opportunity meets preparation. As much as Marquez down-played his qualifying result in Austin, it showed the Spaniard’s true grit. I ask the question: are you not entertained?
The above photo is 2000 pixels wide, if you click on it. Feel free to use it as your computer desktop background.
Triumph Motorcycles America is reporting a record setting first quarter, which also included that highest single-day of retails sales ever (March 31st).
Because of this, triumph says that in the 500cc+ on-road & dual-sport categoies the British marque is the top-selling European brand in North America.
Although triumph isn’t talking concrete figures, the company does say that sales for Q1 2015 were up 16% over last year’s numbers.
The brand does say that this most recent quarter’s sales success marks the 13th such quarter, out of the past four years (16 quarters), which year-over-year growth.
News being broke by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says that Erik Buell Racing has ceased its operations. The East Troy company plans to also file for protection from creditors under Chapter 128 of Wisconsin’s bankruptcy code.
Under Wisconsin law, EBR will be placed into receivership (the company will be run by attorney Michael S. Polsky), and ultimately bids will be made on purchasing the bankrupt company. If no bids are made, the company’s assets will be auctioned off, with the profits going to EBR’s creditors.
Even though we just finished covering the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas, Yours Truly is still on the road…and I’m actually all the way out in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (near Nice, France) for the international press launch for the MV Agusta Turismo Veloce 800.
We have just had the media debrief on the new Adventure-Sport machine, where MV Agusta President and CEO Giovanni Castiglioni had some interesting news.
First, the Turismo Veloce is the last of the new three-cylinder models from MV Agusta, as the Italian manufacturer feels it has completely exhausted the market segments for the three-cylinder platform.
Second, the MV Agusta is in the process of bringing out an all-new four-cylinder platform, which we presumably will start seeing as early as the 2015 EICMA show, as MV Agusta expects to debut four new models for 2016.
Just as it is easy to compare Austin to Portland, one can do the same with the One Show and the Handbuilt Show — in fact, you’ll even find some of the same machines at both events (and that’s not a bad thing).
Despite the One Show being our home event, the subtle differences between the two motorbike exhibitions make the Handbuilt Show the superior night out, in our opinion…even if only by a thin margin.
Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s the carefully curated bikes on display, but there’s a polish to the Handbuilt Show that elevates it slightly beyond frat-like atmosphere in PDX…it could just be the “beautiful people” coming in from COTA to poke around, who class the place up.
Nestled in the painfully hip downtown area of Austin, the Handbuilt Show is free to the public, and offers a little bit of something for every kind of motorcycle enthusiast: sport bikes to street-trackers, cruisers to café racers…there was even a slammed to the ground scooter this year.
Yamaha Motor USA issued a recall for several motorcycles — FJ-09, FZ-09, FZ6R, Super Ténéré, Super Ténéré ES, and YZF-R6 — that were manufactured between September 1, 2014 and November 17, 2014.
The cause of the recall, which affects 4,900 units, is an incorrectly manufactured shift cam segment stopper, which has a sharp edge instead on the inside of the bend, instead of a smooth radius.
Because of this, the stopper can crack and possibly fracture where the edge is sharp, which in turn would cause the transmission not to shift properly.
A bit of shocking news in the rally raid world, as Laia Sanz has jumped ship from HRC to KTM for the Women’s Enduro World Championship.
The move means Sanz will also compete as a factory KTM rider in the various FIM World Championship rallies, including the Dakar Rally, though only where the schedule permits, as the Women’s Enduro World Championship is her racing priority.