News

American Patrick “PJ” Jacobsen will get an equipment change for his 2017 bid in the World Supersport Championship, jumping ship from Honda to the MV Agusta Reparto Corse team. Jacobsen tested with MV Agusta at the recent WSBK test in Jerez, where his results on the MV Agusta F3 675 must have impressed the Italian factory, as the audition landed him the job. The move to MV Agusta will hopefully be a benefitical one for Jacobsen, as he starts his fourth full season in the World Supersport Championship. PJ was the 2015 runner-up in the Championship, and finished the 2016 season fourth overall.

Bikes

If you are having a hard time figuring out what to get that special motorcyclist in your life, let us suggest something from the recently formed Spirit Motorcycles brand. The British marque’s first offering is a trio of motorcycles: the GP Street is a naked street bike, the GP Sport is its fully faired sibling, and the GP Corse R is the full-fledge track supersport machine. The base model machines make 160hp from their three-cylinder engine, and tip the scales around the 320 lbs mark. But, if you want to spring for the R-spec models, you are looking at a 180hp and 309 lbs machine, sans fuel. Do we have your attention now?

Bikes

America might have invented supermoto racing, but the sport’s largest support base easily comes now from that other side of the Atlantic – more specifically, from France. So, it shouldn’t surprise us to learn that Honda’s French importer Superboost makes a special supermoto version of the Honda CRF450 for the French market. For the 2017 model year, the Honda CRF450 Supermoto follows that changes made to Big Red’s 450cc dirt bike, which notably includes the return of fork springs (goodbye air forks), an electric starter, and down-draft fuel injection. Basically a kit that is added at the importer level, the 2017 Honda CRF450 Supermoto lineup has three models, building off the CRF450R (€11,299), CRF450RX (€10,999), and CRF450X dirt bike (€10,999), with each getting their own taste of the supermoto treatment.