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Jensen Beeler

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With a couple caveats, I would describe the track day business model as heavily commoditized. That is to say, there is little to differentiate the track day of one organization from the next, which leaves most riders buying track time based on location, schedule, and price.

If you don’t give it too much thought, this concept shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, what riders are really buying is time on the race track, the conditions of which are relatively outside the purview of the organization hosting the event. This makes a brutal business landscape, and it is not surprising to see the space making a race to the bottom.

Now to be fair, some organizations run a tighter ship than others; some track day groups offer more instruction than others (especially for novice riders); and there are track days that offer more perks (lunch, photos, celebrity riders, etc) than others, but all-in-all the product is the same: a few hours of cumulative time on a race track.

In my 15 years of track riding, the biggest differentiation I have found between track day groups is the culture (or lack thereof) an organization has been able to infuse into its program. But, this only moves the needle a minuscule amount, and it shows in the ever-increasingly competitive marketplace that is motorcycle track riding.

For the past month, Kawasaki has been teasing a new addition to its supercharged motorcycle lineup. We didn’t know too much about the machine as the time, other than it would fall into the company’s “Z” lineup of naked sport bikes.

Most educated guesses then pegged the bike as a 1,000cc supercharged streetfighter, and we have been eagerly waiting for the bike’s October 23rd arrival to see if our assumptions were correct.

Now today, we get our first glimpse of the machine, as well as its name, as Team Green continues its teaser campaign of the 2020 Kawasaki ZH2.

We know it is coming, a new KTM 1290 Super Duke R for the 2020 model year, but just in case there was any doubt, the Austrians have begun teasing their new “Beast” ahead of its EICMA show debut.

The news comes from a short teaser video, which shows a number of KTM technicians building a motorcycle. With the title and hashtag “#GETDUKED” being shown, the possibilities for the model are quite small.

And, if we scrub through the frames, we can see numerous hints that the bike in question is a high-spec motorcycle, with a single-sided swingarm. The steel trellis frame looks exactly like the one spotted in spy photos of the new Super Duker R.

Episode 118 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one is a WorldSBK show, as the production championship comes to us from Magny-Cours, France.

As such, this means that we see Steve English joined by Gordon Ritchie on the mics, as they are our World Superbike reporting duo for the 2019 season.

Recording straight from trackside at the French track, the guys give some conversation about the on-track action at Magny-Cours, as well as what is happening off the track.

Here is something to keep an eye out for as the 2020 model year comes closer to reality – it is an upcoming sport bike from British marque Hesketh, which has a supercharged 1,000cc three-cylinder engine.

Details beyond what I just said, and the concept sketch above, are non-existent, but the boutique brand is keen to make this motorcycle a reality in the next 365 days (if not sooner).

Confirming rumors long held in the WorldSBK paddock, Leon Haslam will not be with the Kawasaki Racing Team in the WorldSBK paddock next year. Though it hasn’t been announced yet, Alex Lowes is expected to take Haslam’s seat.

Haslam’s role in the KRT squad came after his British Superbike Championship win in 2018, and while this year’s season showed mixed results for the British rider (including a win at the Suzuka 8-Hours), the opportunity to add another top Superbike talent alongside Jonathan Rea was too much of an allure for Team Green.

Doing the math ahead of the Thai GP, it would be hard to see how Marc Marquez would come out of Buriram not the 2019 MotoGP World Champion, as the Spaniard only needed to finish two points ahead of Andrea Dovizioso to clinch the title.

The problem though is that Marc Marquez is not known for taking the easy points, and instead we witnessed a masterful race from the Repsol Honda rider, as he battled his way to the front of the race.

The result was Marc Marquez taking the MotoGP World Championship title in dominating form – a fitting end to his 2019 season.

Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP) is recalling 6,632 units of its 2019-2020 Can-Am Ryker three-wheeler because their wheel nuts may crack, which could cause the wheels to loosen.

The issue has been tracked back to at least one lot of bad parts, which BRP began receiving from February 7, 2019.

However, once the first parts were introduced into the BRP factory, the Canadian company could not track them with enough precision to reduce the number of vehicles involved in this recall, therefore the remaining production through the 2019 model year has been included in this recall group.

A little over 10 months ago, we brought you the first news about KTM’s planned mid-sized lineup, with KTM CEO Stefan Pierer spilling the beans that his company was working on a new 500cc twin-cylinder platform.

Now it seems, the first of these “490” models is getting close to prime time, and we can expect five motorcycles in total to come from this new parallel-twin lineup.