Within the motorcycle industry, Asphalt & Rubber has earned itself a reputation for breaking stories from our so-called “Bothan spies”, as insiders often tip us off to intriguing stories and happenings in the two-wheeled realm. Just a few weeks ago, we got one of those interesting tips, one that said that Dainese was being put up for sale. So, we called the bossman himself, Dainese CEO Cristiano Silei (an announcement too that A&R was able to break because of our Bothan spies), to see what the story was all about, and indeed if the rumors were true. The call resulted in a terse answer, and perhaps an expected response, but Silei also provided an interesting explanation of Dainese’s current investment position, and what results the company has seen since its purchase three years ago.
Qatar is always a strange place to kick off the MotoGP season: a windswept circuit in the middle of the…
If you go to Triumph’s North American website, you will notice that the Daytona 675 is missing from the lineup. Similarly, the three-cylinder supersport machine is nowhere to be found on the Triumph Motorcycles UK site. And even an intrepid look at Triumph Japan, Triumph India, and Triumph Brazil websites gives no joy, despite the latter’s still having the now defunct Tiger 1050 model. So what’s the beans? The answer of course is the Euro4 homologation standard, which came into play for the 2016 model year, and has been killing motorcycle models ever since. To be fair, we saw some Euro3 bikes still on the market in 2017, however, this is because they were sold on a waiver from the Euro4 standard, mostly for final production runs.
Valetnino Rossi will race for two more years with the Movistar Yamaha team in MotoGP. At Qatar, Yamaha announced that…
While we are happy to report the rebirth of the Cagiva brand, and the pending launch of MV Agusta’s new Brutale 1000, we do have some bad news to report from Italy, as this will be the last year of the MV Agusta F4 superbike, for quite some time. While the Italian brand plans to debut three new models from its four-cylinder platform over the next three years, the company’s superbike offering will be the last to be revitalized. As such, the Brutale 1000 will debut this year as a 2019 machine, a “neo-classical” bike will debut next year as a 2020 machine, and a new “F4” will debut a year after that, as a 2021 model year bike. This news is about to get worse, before it gets better, so let me explain further.
It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Ivano Beggio, the founder of Aprilia, who passed away…
MotoGP Qualifying Results from the French GP at Le Mans, France
There’s a growing rumor (if not fact) that Pirelli won’t be supplying the World Superbike Championship with tires after the…
