It is news that have known for the past few days, ever since it became clear that Takaaki Nakagami would need surgery to repair his injured shoulder, which he hurt during a crash with Valentino Rossi earlier this year at Assen.
And now, we have official word that Johann Zarco will ride in Nakagami’s place at the LCR Honda, for the final three races for the 2019 MotoGP season.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting tough news for the Harley-Davidson LiveWire, as the American motorcycle brand is halting production of its first electric motorcycle because of issues with the bike’s charging system.
With bikes just now arriving at dealers, the announcement is poorly timed, and the issue seems to stem from the onboard Level 1 charger on the Harley-Davidson LiveWire, as owners are being told only to use the DC fast-charging system on the bike.
We are one week away from seeing the production form of the upcoming Ducati Streetfighter V4, and this means that the Italian brand is starting its hype machine for this hotly anticipated motorcycle.
Borgo Panigale won’t have to work too hard to get us excited about the Streetfighter V4, however, as the bike’s specs do much of their own talking.
Try this on for size: 208hp @ 12,750 rpm from its 1,103cc Desmosedici Stradale engine; 392 lbs of dry mass, biplane winglets attached to the fairings, and an electronics package straight off the high-tech Panigale V4.
Episode 119 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Neil Morrison and David Emmett on the mics once again, as they discusses the Thai GP at Buriram.
Of course, the show has to start with the new MotoGP World Champion, Marc Marquez, who had a dominant season in 2019, and sees his sixth MotoGP title coming earlier in age than any other rider in history.
Looking back through Marquez’s season, it is impossible also not to talk about what has been happening in the Repsol Honda team, as well as HRC.
Saturday’s WorldSBK race saw only 12 riders on the grid, as six riders (Chaz Davies, Sandro Cortese, Marco Melandri, Leon Camier, Ryuichi Kiyonari, and Eugene Laverty) sat out the race in protest over the conditions.
Just 20 minutes before the start of Race 1 though, as many as 14 riders seemed set to sit out the day’s events, citing issues with the track’s surface, which had just been recently laid, and was still seeping oil to the surface, and was also dusty from lack of use.
However, with pressure being exerted on the riders to race, reportedly by their teams and Dorna, a number of riders lined up on the grid, despite their agreements with their colleagues.
It has always surprised me that while Dunlop is a huge player in the US motorcycle tire market, the American brand hasn’t really latched onto one of its domestic market’s biggest trends on two wheels: adventure-touring.
I am sure that if you asked the tire gurus at Dunlop if they had an ADV tire in their arsenal, they would reply with several models to choose from. The graphic near the bottom of this story seems to support this notion.
But, diving deeper into Dunlop’s lineup shows really a strong showing of DOT-legal dirt bikes tire, but with plenty of white space on the board when it comes to the sizes and expectations common with today’s big ADV bikes.
Well, that needle is moving a bit today, with Dunlop’s latest news in the adventure-touring space. This is because Dunlop has two big announcement for its ADV tire offerings.
Confirming the news we already reported on, Alex Lowes will leave the Pata Yamaha team at the end of the 2019 WorldSBK, and move into green colors for next year, as the teammate to Jonathan Rea in the Kawasaki Racing Team.
Lowes replaces Leon Haslam in the factory Kawasaki team, and brings with him a great deal of knowledge on Team Green’s fastest rising competitor: Yamaha.
Episode 22 of the Brap Talk podcast is now out for your two-wheeled audio pleasure, and it is packed with some interesting motorcycle discussions.
In this show, there is a little something for everyone, as the topics run the gamut of the motorcycle industry.
Kawasaki is already doing a pretty good job of teasing out information on its new supercharged motorcycle, but that hasn’t stopped our colleagues from across the pond from snooping around for more.
As such, the Belgian site MaxxMoto has come across four images that show the 2020 Kawasaki ZH2 in the flesh, giving us our first real glimpse into this blown naked bike.
The new bike season is starting to heat up, and the zenith is only a few weeks away. I am of course talking about the EICMA show in Milan.
As such, the Germans are gearing up for a big show in Italy this year, with an all-new booth design, and more importantly, four new motorcycles to showcase.
We know this, because BMW Motorrad told us so in a press release, but the real information we are craving is which bikes we will see in Milan, and for that, we have some strong guesses.
For American fans of the WorldSBK Championship, there will once again be a fellow countryman to root for next season, as Garrett Gerloff is set to move from the MotoAmerica series to the World Superbike starting grid.
With an official announcement soon to come, our Bothan spies are tipping to us that Gerloff will take Marco Melandri’s seat at the GRT Yamaha squad.