Hello and welcome to the first installment of Asphalt & Rubber’s 2017 Superbike Deathmatch – our take on the motorcycle media’s superbike shootout review format, and the solitary path for a motorcycle to become the A&R Superbike of 2017. 

For those just tuning into the Superbike Deathmatch, the rules are easy. In each round, two bikes enter the race track, but only one bike leaves.

We have six motorcycles from the eight superbike manufacturers on the market, and the trim-level for each bike has been carefully chosen so that all the superbikes have a similar price and feature set as the other motorcycles in the comparison.

This means that we are looking at motorcycles around the $20,000 price point, all of which have IMU-powered electronics and brakes, along with up-spec components. Our goal here is to compare apples to apples, and see which one tastes best.

Our venue is the Portland International Raceway, and to evaluate these machines we have four riders that vary in skill levels and physical attributes, from professional racers to track day enthusiasts, from tall to short, and from skinny to….less skinny.

For our first round, we have started things off with a special treat, and a battle for the right to call a bike the “Best Italian Superbike” on the market. That’s right, we are going to pit the Ducati 1299 Panigale S against the Aprilia RSV4 RF.

What you see here are early leaked photos of the 2018 Honda Gold Wing – one of the most successful and important motorcycles for the Western markets.

Honda is expected to debut this new model at a media event in October, but our friends at MaxxMoto and Oliepeil managed to get their dirty Dutch-speaking mits on these low-res gems, ahead of time.

Beyond the styling refresh, the most obvious change that we can see for the Honda Goldwing is the new front-end, which appears to be a Hossack-styled design – similar to what BMW uses on its K-series motorcycles.

Andrea Iannone has been something of an enigma since joining Suzuki. The Italian was blisteringly quick last year on the Ducati, which is one of the reasons Ducati took so long to choose between him and Andrea Dovizioso, after they signed Jorge Lorenzo to the factory team.

He was fast when he jumped on the Suzuki GSX-RR for the first time at the Valencia test, then carried that speed to Sepang, where he finished as second quickest overall.

Things have gone downhill since then. The Italian slipped down the order at the Phillip Island, then trailed further behind at the Qatar test.

His season has gone from bad to worse since racing started: he has five DNFs from 13 races, and when he finishes, he usually ends up around tenth. His best result so far has been a seventh place in Texas, but that was the exception, not the rule.

He currently sits in sixteenth in the championship, with a paltry 33 points. Iannone, race-winner in Austria last year, sits behind both Monster Tech 3 Yamaha rookies, and behind a total of seven riders on satellite bikes.

His rookie teammate, who has spent most of the season banged up with injury, is threatening to beat him more and more regularly. How to solve an issue like Andrea Iannone?

There has been one possible solution floating around since early summer. The basic concept is a surprising, yet surprisingly logical, swap.

The idea was that Andrea Iannone would be shipped off to World Superbikes to ride the Kawasaki of Jonathan Rea, while Rea would take Iannone’s place on the Ecstar Suzuki in MotoGP.

Here’s an interesting video, and an interesting lesson in physics. Filling a tank with water, and then pressurizing it with air, François Gissy has made a drag racing trike that gets up to 160 mph with only power from the jet stream of water it produces.

This exercise in Newton’s third law of motion contains a considerable amount of force, accelerating Gissy and his rig to over 5gs, as it only takes half a second to go 0-60 on the track. It’s pretty impressive to watch.

Valentino Rossi is to travel to Aragon and attempt to race in the fourteenth round of MotoGP at the Motorland Aragon circuit.

After evaluating his fitness on a Yamaha R1M at Misano on Monday and Tuesday, the Italian had his leg assessed by Dr Pascarella, who performed the surgery on his broken tibia and fibula. After that examination, Rossi decided he was fit enough to travel to Aragon and attempt to race.

Rossi faces one more hurdle before he is allowed to race. He will be subject to a further assessment by the circuit doctors at the Motorland Aragon track, who will have to evaluate whether he is fit enough to race.

20 days ago today, Valentino Rossi fell off an enduro bike at slow speed, breaking his tibia and fibula in the crash. That night, he had pins fitted to fix the bones, and went home the next day to recover.

It looked like his championship was over. He would have to miss both Misano and Aragon, and that would put him too far behind to ever catch up.

20 days later, and Rossi has already ridden a motorcycle on track. Twice. On Monday and Tuesday, he rode a Yamaha R1M around a damp Misano. A few laps on Monday, a total of 20 laps on Tuesday.

The press release Yamaha issued said that he finished the second day “with an improved feeling and a more positive impression compared to yesterday.” Translation? He’s going to try to ride at Aragon.

Episode 60 of the Paddock Pass Podcast sees David Emmett and Neil Morrison on the mics, as they cover both the San Marino GP at Misano.

Despite the absence of Valentino Rossi, who injured himself just before the race weekend, the coastal race was a busy one, as MotoGP once again saw a new championship leader emerge from Sunday’s results, Marc Marquez.

Further back in the finishing order showed some big changes for the championship title as well, with Dovizioso settling for third, Viñales getting fourth, and Pedrosa struggling just to finish a lap with his ever-cold tires.

Analyzing what this all means for the end of the season, Neil and David provide some great insights, and also discuss what is going on in the Moto2 and Moto3 categories.

After a quick talk about Moto2 and Moto3, the conversation turns to the big winners and losers of the last two rounds. It’s another great show from the Paddock Pass crew, and you won’t want to miss it.

As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to the show on iTunes and SoundCloud – we even have an RSS feed for you. If you like the show, we would really appreciate you giving it a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

The Benelli Tornado 302 is an adorable motorcycle that boasts Italian design with Chinese manufacturing. When we showed it to you two years ago, it received positive acclaim, and was one of a handful of stand-out bikes that the Italian brand surprised us with at the 2015 EICMA show.

It seems now that Benelli is relaunching the Tornado 302, under a new name, the Benelli 302R. Little seems to have changed in the past two years, aside from a new graphics package on the bodywork, Euro4 compliance, and over course the new moniker.

Vintage racers know all to well the difficulty there can be when it comes to finding appropriate tires for the race track, as the odd rim sizes of classic motorcycles are often outside the sizing parameters of good modern sticky tires.

This leaves many racers using street-focused tires for their racing needs, but that could all come to an end, as Metzeler is expanding its Racetec RR Range to include 18-inch wheel sizes.

For reasons beyond our imagination and comprehension, the failed business experiment that was the Skully AR-1 helmet has been revived by new investors.

Sending out a blast to the “Skully Nation” email list, the brand’s new owners Ivan and Rafael Contreras, have announced their plans to revive this seemingly dead project.

One can barely fathom why someone would want to continue a project that so obviously was doomed to its own failure, and that also so grossly betrayed the goodwill of the motorcycle community; and yet, here we are, with Skully Technologies taking over where Skully, Inc. left off.

The presumption of this news is that the new management hopes to bring the AR-1 helmet, with its heads-up display technology, to market.

The announcement goes on also to say that Skully Technologies will leverage augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence technologies for the wearable products industry – a nod to the three hottest technology sectors in Silicon Valley at this moment in time.