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Jensen Beeler

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The Endurance World Championship season is about to start, with the 2014 Bol d’Or 24-Hour race kicking off in just a few hours in Magny-Cours. But woe is you, you have no way of watching the race, right? Pssh…Asphalt & Rubber has you covered, my endurance loving friend.

Well actually, the FIM does…we are just making things putting-on-pants-easy for you in terms of watching the live stream and timing on your computer box. Sit back, relax, and watch 24-hours of motorcycle racing goodness from the comfort of your monitor’s warm glow. Go ahead, take your shoes off. We won’t mind. Racing starts 6am Pacific time, 9am Eastern.

I got a bit fired up yesterday while I was talking about the spectator zones that will be put into place for the 2014 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and I got a bit of flak for calling it “the world’s most unprofessionally run international motorsport event.It is, full stop.

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is about to host its 92nd running, and in the almost hundred years of competition, the Race to Clouds has failed to move beyond its folksy roots.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this race. It’s a great historic event, which actually gets more coverage abroad than it does in the United States. But, it has some serious growing to do from a safety, media, coverage, and promotional point-of-view.

Implementing new rules for the 2014, as to where spectators can view the race, is a huge step forward for Pikes Peak, and the following video is a great example why some modicum of professional organization needs to be brought to this race.

Chalk a victory up for the two-wheelers, as Germany’s famed Autobahn road system is set to go the way of the toll road…except for motorcycles that is. The new toll system will interestingly enough apply only to vehicles with foreign license tags, with permits to circulate on the autobahn being sold at border crossings into Germany and other locations within the country.

As usual, the team to beat in the Endurance World Championship is the Suzuki Endurance Racing Team (SERT). Taking the 2013 title by a thin five-point margin though, SERT’s history of dominance in endruance racing is certainly being challenged. Biting at its heels are the factory teams from Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Honda — all of whom have strong teams for the 2014 season.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same — which applies equally well for the 2014 Suzuki GSX-R1000 which SERT will once again be campaigning in the EWC. The 2014 SERT Suzuki GSX-R1000 looks like almost a carbon-copy of last year’s machine, and we will just assume that they don’t want to change a winning formula.

At the helm of the SERT Suzuki GSX-R1000 are team regulars Vincent Philippe and Anthony Delhalle, who will be joined by Erwan Nigon and reserve rider Damian Cudlin. With 13 Endurance World Championship under its belt, SERT will look for its 14th title this year, and their title defense starts tomorrow with the Bol d’Or 24 Hour race at Magny-Cours, France.

After we spotted the name “Africa Twin” in the USPTO online filings, buzz about a proper adventure-touring model from Honda have been swirling the internet, and even in print. German magazine Motorrad adds to the rumor mill, saying that the recently released privateer racer-only Honda CRF450 Rally will serve as the basis for the ADV model.

Italian online site Moto.it confirms that the Africa Twin will be visually similar to the CRF450 Rally, and goes on to say that the new model will likely not debut in 2014, but instead Spring 2015.

According to Moto.it, the Honda Africa Twin will have a strong off-road bias as an adventure model (a 21″ spoked wheel up front), be roughly 440 lbs at the curb, and have a displacement between 900cc and 1,000cc.

Honda Racing is back for another season in the Endurance World Championship, replacing the OEM’s lineup of “TT Legends” is a group of French endurance specialists — tipping Honda’s hand to make a serious bid for the Championship title.

Gearing up for the EWC’s first round this weekend, the Bol d’Or at Magny-Course, Julien Da Costa, Freddy Foray, and Sebastien Gimbert will be riding the 2014 Honda CBR1000RR SP.

The trio have a bevy of EWC experience under their belts, and HRC seems to finally have its logistics and team sorted out for EWC duty. Endurance fans, expect to see strong results from Honda this year.

The world’s most unprofessionally run international motorsport event is growing up a little bit for 2014, as the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb will finally have spectator restrictions on its mountain-side race course starting with this year’s event.

Instead of having spectators sitting right on the tarmac, in a sort of 12.42 mile free-for-all, event organizers for “The Race to the Clouds” will have severe spectating restrictions, with six designated spectating zones located throughout the race course.

In total, the six spectating zones will account for roughly 1.5 miles of course length, so roughly 1/10 the original area available to PPIHC fans. As such for 2014, a general admission ticket will give a spectator access to the starting line, Halfway Picnic Grounds, Ski Area, Glen Cove, Cove Creek, and the Devil’s Playground.

However, once the race begins, fans will be stuck at whichever location they choose, and law enforcement officers will issue trespassing tickets to those fans found outside those areas, i.e. hiking the interconnecting trails along the race course.

This weekend marks the return of Grand Prix Motorcycle racing to the South American continent, and the MotoGP paddock is slowly making its long and arduous journey to the Autódromo Termas de Río Hondo.

Revamped in 2012, the MotoGP Championship had to pushback its 2013 plans, amid construction concerns and issues with a certain petroleum company having a beef with the Argentinean government.

That being said, MotoGP machines are in Argentina now (we hope), and will be on the circuit come Friday. We’ve already introduced to you the design of the Termas de Río Hondo circuit, now take a lap around the nearly three-mile circuit with former Grand Prix Champion Franco Uncini.

The folks at Ronax are certainly getting away with not saying much, especially when it comes to their soon-to-be-released Ronax 500 motorcycle. Dressed in a neon yellow cover, limited to only 46 units, and looking suspiciously similar thru the sheet to a Honda NSR500, what Ronax isn’t saying is that its creation is a replica of Valentino Rossi’s last two-stroke race bike (the Honda NSR500), but they are certainly doing everything in their power to convey that very fact.

Since the dawn of the four-stroke era of Grand Prix racing, many old-school GP fans have been left wanting the days of 500cc two-stroke machines, which were known for their razor-thin power bands, lack of electronics, and propensity to launch riders into low-Earth orbit.

The last man to win a GP championship on a 500cc two-stroke machine, Valentino Rossi is of course a crowd favorite – and using his name and history, without actually using it, is a clever (though modestly unethical) way of selling some bikes.

You may remember the Yamaha PED1 and Yamaha PES1 electric motorcycle concepts, which the tuning fork brand debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show last year. Modest, yet slightly futuristic looking, the overall impression we got from readers was that Yamaha was onto something with its PED1 and PES1 bikes, and it seems the Japanese OEM has heard your excitement.

Announcing plans in its 2013 Annual Report to bring the PED1 and PES1 to market by 2016, Yamaha is yet another major OEM to jump on the electric bandwagon and add legitimacy to this budding powertrain segment.

KTM continues to have successful quarterly sales reports, as the Austrian company has announced that its Q1 2014 sales are up 26.8% over last year’s figures. Moving a total of 32,994 KTM-branded vehicles worldwide, the Austrian brand was assisted in that figure by Bajaj, which sold 2,748 KTM 200 Duke & KTM 390 Duke motorcycles in India.

For that bump in sales, KTM reports that quarterly revenue was up 20% over Q1 2013, for a total of €196.9 million. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) came to a total of €14.6 million, up a whopping 254% over last year.