The question seems fairly rhetorical, right? We thought so too when we got a tip that someone had pitted a Yamaha YZF-R1 against a custom carbon fiber road bike, afterall there’s a 179hp power discrepancy, right? Well here’s the catch, the contest for this battle of two-wheeled brawn is took place on the downhill slope of the Alpe d’Huez, a part of the French alps that also happens to be one of the hardest climbs and descents on the Tour de France (that little bicycle race that’s going on right now).
One of the cooler parts that comes from running Asphalt & Rubber is the feedback we get from our Bothan spy network that read the site. No sooner did we publish Luca Bar’s renders of his Ducati SuperSport concept, did we get tips that Ducati was actually currently considering such a model for its future model road map. There’s no doubt that the SS line had a cult following in its day, and the fact still remains that Ducati does not have a “tamer sport bike” in its line that would appeal to the veteran Ducatisti.
Probably the worst kept secret on the mountain, the 90th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb will occur on a fully-paved race course. Responding to legal and safety pressures, Pikes Peak has slowly been paving its dirt sections, which during the hill climb week made for spectacular plumes of dust and breath-taking slides from cars and bikes alike. With under 3 miles of dirt section currently remaining on the course, Pikes Peak has slowly been adding more asphalt sections over the past few years, which in-turn have been a major contributing factor to the hill climb seeing records smashed across virtually all classes each year.
News out of Germany this weekend is that 15 of the 17 riders racing in the MotoGP Championship have threatened to boycott the Japanese GP at Motegi later this year because of safety concerns. Lead by Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo, who publicly announced Saturday at the post-qualifying debriefing that they would not race in Japan, the riders are worried about radiation from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, despite Motegi officials (essentially HRC) declaring the Twin Rings circuit safe. The planned boycott also comes ahead of an independent study being conducted on behalf of MotoGP, which is supposed to be an objective assessment of the track’s safety for host MotoGP (the results of the study are due to go public on July 31st).
Reliable sources are perpetuating the rumor that World Superbike is considering moving to a single-bike rule for its riders, presumably…
Tracing back to when Ducati made the SS line, Luca Bar has put pen to pad again, rendering a modern-day…