Many in the MotoGP paddock have been waiting to cast their verdict on the CRT endeavor, withholding their judgments until a top GP rider took to the helm of a CRT machine and properly put the bike through its paces. With tests earlier in the year showing Mika Kallio on-board the BMW/Suter to be over six seconds off the pace of the 800cc-era machines, the CRT future of MotoGP looked to be in jeopardy. Those lap times improved over the year to be “only” four seconds off that 1,000-era bike pace, showing improvement, yet a gap to the front-runners. Now with Edwards finally swinging a leg over the BMW S1000RR-powered Suter prototype, surely more comparisons between the factory prototypes and CRT offerings are to ensue.
Asphalt & Rubber has teamed up with the San Francisco D-Store to bring you Mark Neale’s Fastest, the long-awaited sequel to the hit MotoGP documentary Faster. The San Francisco Bay Area premiere of Fastest, our screening will be held at 7pm on Thursday, December 8th at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in downtown San Francisco. Tickets will be available online or at the box office for $10.50, though we recommend purchasing your tickets ASAP, as we anticipate to sell out the movie well before the event date. All proceeds will go to A&R’s favorite charity: Riders for Health. We hope to see you there.
The 2012 Ducati 1199 Panigale comes loaded with a bevy of new features and technologies, along with enough three-letter acronyms to go double-word score on any unassuming rider. ABS, DTC, DQS, LED, EBC, DDA+, DES, RbW, OMGWTFBBQ, this alphabet soup all stands for key components on the Ducati 1199 Panigale, and to help explain those letters Ducati has enlisted Ernesto Marinelli, the head of the Ducati World Superbike effort.
While KTM made waves with the debut of the KTM Freeride E electric dirt bike, the Austrian brand wasn’t the only OEM hocking an electric offering at the 2011 EICMA show. Unveiling a very rough electric concept, Husqvarna continued to redefine itself for the future with the Husqvarna E-Go Concept. The physical size of a 125cc dirt bike, the Husqvarna E-Go is the exploration of entry-level electric street motard. With OEMs hoping that electrics will bring in a new generation of rider, the Husqvarna E-Go seems to hit all the right bullet points for that concept, but as always, time will tell.
Back in 2009 Suzuki and Volkswagen made some headlines, as the German automaker took a 19.9% stake in the Japanese manufacturer. Seemingly however doomed from the start, the partnership in motorcycle circles erroneously spurred some interesting thoughts of a Volkswagen motorcycle coming to fruition. While industry journalists spun gold out of hay, the two behemoth manufacturers failed to come to terms on any of their proposed partnership goals, leaving both parties to wonder why they were interested in each other, let alone financially intwined.
With the news that Crescent Suzuki would make a move from the British Superbike Championship, and enter into the World…