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Jensen Beeler

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Álvaro Bautista Breaks Femur in FP3 at Qatar GP

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UPDATE: A&R just had another chat with Rizla Suzuki, racing this weekend depends on the ability to get a rider to Qatar in-time. No decision has been made, but the impression was that if Hopper can get out to Qatar, he’d be in the saddle for Qualifying on Saturday evening.

We’ve just gotten confirmation from the Rizla Suzuki team that Alvaro Bautista had broken his femur from his high-speed crash in FP3 at the Qatar GP. Currently undergoing tests at Hamad Medical Corporation in Doha, Bautista needs a pin for the broken bone, an operation the rider would like to undertake in his home country of Spain, but the team is still evaluating whether to undergo that surgery in Qatar.

Bautista’s highside crash occurred at considerable speed in Losail’s Turn 15, a fast left-hander. While the team will release more information later tonight, there are no plans to bring in a new rider for the Qatar GP race this weekend, and all eyes are now on whether Bautista return can return in time for the next MotoGP round, which is on April 3rd at Jerez.

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Rumors

New Ducati Learner Model Coming to Australia?

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News coming from our good friends at Ducati News Today, tell us that according to one Australian dealer, Ducati is set to debut a small-displacement learner motorcycle that would adhere to Australia’s Learner Approved Motorcycle Scheme (LAMS). Fraiser Motorcycles is stating that Australia will get the new model in the coming months, and good money says that the bike is a modified Monster 696.

Whether that machine will have a smaller bore or shorter stroke is up for debate, but we imagine whichever is cheapest to produce will likely dictate the answer. Also expect to see some sort of deliberate power reduction used in the design, as Australia’s LAMS calls for a 201hp/metric ton horsepower-to-weight ratio.

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Racing

Brno Needs National Support for 2012 MotoGP Race

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The times are certainly tough race circuits right now. On the MotoGP roster the Hungarian Balatonring has become almost the unicorn of the paddock, while the Jerez de la Frontera Circuit is in financial crisis. Similarly back home in the United States, New Jersey Motorsports Park is going through a bankruptcy proceeding that should see the track come out unscathed, but frames the picture nicely none-the-less (not counting the increasingly popular Motorland Aragon).

Add to this list now the Automotodrom Brno, as the Czech track is facing financial concerns of its own. While the Brno round is secure for the 2011 season, talk is beginning if the track can operate in the 2012 season without national support. While the Czech GP brings in substantial revenue for the area surrounding it and the Czech Republic as a whole, the latter entity gives virtually no support to the racing event.

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Reviews

Ride Review: 2011 Ducati Diavel

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Even before its launch in Milan last year, the 2011 Ducati Diavel has been the talk of the motorcycle industry since its first spy photo was released. It amuses me that Ducati chose to name the Diavel (say: dee-ahh-vole) after the Bolognese word for the devil. The linguistic foreplay from Ducati is just asking for a response from motorcyclists who feel that Bologna company has over-stepped its prescribed branding boundaries, and sold its soul to the Devil of bottom-line thinking.

While rife with metaphor, there is an important financial reason for the genesis of the Ducati Diavel. As I’ve already explained the business reasons behind Ducati’s choice (or non-choice) to make the Diavel in a previous article. My analysis continues from there, and brings us to the question of: How does the Ducati power cruiser ride, 240mm-wide tire and all?

Setting out to the City of Angels (I seriously couldn’t ask for better fodder from Ducati here), I swung a leg over the Ducati Diavel for a day of riding on some of Los Angeles’s finest and most well know routes. The short answer to how the Diavel fared: damningly well.

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News

Zero Motorcycles Gets $17 Million Investment

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Using strictly the Charlie Sheen sense of the word, Zero Motorcycles is WINNING right now. Announcing today that it closed another round of financing, Zero has $17 million of a $26 million round confirmed ($9 million still outstanding). The funding continues to be lead by the Invus investment group, who have been the major financial backbone at Zero Motorcycles. A funding round of that size can only mean one thing for a motorcycle company: going into mass production. Surely enough Zero states its intended use of the funds will go towards ramping up its US-based production plans.

Out of all the electric motorcycle vehicle players, Zero has been the most active in the funding department lately, closing round after round of capital investment. With those investments we’ve already seen changes at the Santa Cruz company, with the 2011 Zero Motorcycles line-up featuring upgrade motorcycles, as well as founder Neal Saiki departing the company.

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Racing

About as Close as You’re Going to Get to an Apology for the AMA Pro Road Racing Daytona 200

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To call the Daytona 200 anything less than a disappointment might be fighting words in some circles of motorcycle race fans, and at best the race was a dismal start to the 2011 AMA Pro Road Racing series. From that day’s events, speculation and criticism have surrounded the Daytona 200, its multiple red flags, shortened race distance, and other events that unfolded over the course of its running.

Looking to address those criticisms, AMA Pro Racing has issued a lengthy reply and explanation of how the events unfolded behind the scenes, both in regards to stopping the race for a tire change and regarding repairs to Jason DiSalvo’s motor. AMA race fans hold on tight, because is about as close as you’re going to get to an apology from AMA Pro Racing.

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Racing

Cal Crutchlow to Get a Special Spidi Glove by Friday Night

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After losing the top joint to his pinky finger in a crash during the Monday night testing session at Qatar, Cal Crutchlow has had to have some special gloves from Spidi made in order to accommodate his injured finger and its bandages. Luckily Spidi, the Italian glove manufacturer and Crutchlow sponsor, has been able to rush produce a glove with a larger pinky finger sleeve that incorporates a lycra panel and special reinforcements.

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Products

Yamaha Power Beam – A Damper for Your Chassis

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You can just tell there’s an engineer in Yamaha’s R&D department that dresses up like Wesley Crusher on the weekends just a little too often. Despite how tragically named this product is, Yamaha’s Power Beam is an interesting solution to a problem that few riders have the delicacies of detecting, yet will likely purchase anyway.

Originally developed for the Yamaha YZR-M1 during the 2003 season, the Yamaha Power Beam will initially be made available to 600 lucky T-Max scooter owners in Europe, which on its face makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

However given the hot-rodding culture in Europe that surrounds the T-Max (and the two-wheelers Jell-O like chassis), the “more horsepower than sense” crowd will likely gobble up this latest go-fast trick part from Yamaha.

Looking down the pipe, there is the likelihood that the Yamaha Power Beam will make its way onto future sport bikes from the tuning fork brand. What the Power Beam does is dampen the rate of flex in the chassis, presumably allowing the steel/aluminum frame of the motorcycle to move to its prescribed tolerances, but in a manner that’s more predictable and favorable to a rider’s needs.

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News

30 Years of Troy Lee Designs

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Troy Lee Designs is celebrating 30 years of customizing helmets “For The World’s Fastest Racers” this year, and Honda Powersports has made a nice video that talks to Troy about how he came into the sport, his work, and how his business has grown and evolved over the past three decades.

Troy Lee Designs is obviously know for its custom helmets, which have adorned many a racers’ head, and the firm is also responsible for the paint and livery for the Rizla Suzuki team (along with some other creative work for the MotoGP squad). As for Honda’s involvement, there is now the 2011 Troy Lee Designs Supercross Team, which sees rider Cody Seely battling it out on the dirt for TLD with the Honda race package.

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