News

After seeing the front fairing of the new 2012 Ducati Superbike 1199 last week, we idly speculated that the design included an LED (light-emitting diode) headlamp, as no bulbs or projector assemblies could be seen in the housing. Another tip-off were the slats in the headlight housing, which can readily be seen, and look very similar to the setup used by Audi on its R18 TDI Le Mans race car. Getting a few tips from our loyal readers, and following up with several of our sources, we can confirm that the new Ducati Superbike 1199 will use a completely LED-based headlight system — the first production motorcycle to use such an assembly.

Rumors

We haven’t seen a good solid stirring of the motorcycle rumormill in a while, but today whispers of a BMW six-cylinder naked bike, a K1600R if you will, have be filtering through the web forums and into our ears. With the rumors centering mostly around the fact that BMW introduced its 1,600cc inline-six motor at EICMA in 2009 by sticking it in a very attractive street-naked motorcycle, speculation has begun as to whether the Bavarian firm would follow that concept up with an actual production model (we always did find it strange that the concept for a touring motorcycle was a street-naked).

Racing

Now, we’ve always known that Carlin Dunne, owner of Ducati Santa Barbara, was a wicked fast rider. Despite this fact, the hard part has always been describing to other people how fast Dunne truly is, that is until now. Riding Pikes Peak for the very first time, Carline Dunne not only stood at the pole position on Sunday’s race to the clouds, and not only did he also win the checkered flag in the 1205cc motorcycle class, but the Dunne set the outright fastest time ever for a motorcycle on the fabled mountain road and its 156 turns.