You could have earned yourself a tidy sum today if you’d correctly predicted the MotoGP front row. Though Cal Crutchlow,…
MotoGP Qualifying Results from the Czech GP in Brno, Czech Republic
After visiting three Honda tracks in a row, MotoGP finally heads back to a Yamaha track. Brno is fast, flowing,…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdba9C2G14″>Chewbacca
I had a good chuckle last week, you see one of my Facebook groups posted up some rumors they heard about the upcoming Ducati middleweight sport bike — namely that it would have a double-sided swingarm. “That’s ludicrous,” I said to myself, as I posted an even snarkier reply to the Facebook (oh sweet internet, how you bring the asshole out in all of us). Hrmm…well, it appears I was wrong, as spy photos of the “Ducati 899 Panigale” surfaced just days later, and sure enough, there is a double-sided swinger bolted onto the Babigale™. While it surely gets my goat that I was pie-in-the-face wrong on this rumor (on Facebook no less), what really grinds my gears was that the new model from Borgo Panigale flies in the face of my basic understanding of how Italy’s iconic motorcycle brand even thinks.
Ben Spies has undergone surgery on both his shoulders in Dallas yesterday. The Ignite Pramac rider had surgery to fix the acromioclavicular joint in his left shoulder he dislocated in a practice crash at Indianapolis. Spies also had a minor procedure already scheduled for his previously injured right shoulder, to clean out scar tissue, according to a report in US publication Cycle News. The Texan posted a picture of himself after surgery on his Twitter page, announcing his surgery, but no official word has come from Ducati or Pramac just yet. The bad news for Spies was that after further examination, Spies’ left shoulder was found to have suffered a grade five separation.
One race down, two more to go in the first of MotoGP’s two triple-headers in 2013, and this is the…
The number of riders moving up to MotoGP from Moto2 continues to grow. Pol Espargaro is confirmed at Tech 3,…
Harley-Davidson has debuted its 2014 touring and trike motorcycles, which would normally be an event that we’d forgo even mentioning here at Asphalt & Rubber, after all “brand new” to Harley typically means new paint and chrome pieces to bikes that already exist in the line-up — that’s not entirely the case this year though. Debuting two liquid-cooling engine configurations, the Twin-Cooled High Output Twin Cam 103 motor will be used on the 2014 Harley-Davidson Ultra Limited and the Tri-Glide Ultra trike, while the Screamin’ Eagle Twin-Cooled Twin Cam 110 will be featured on the 2014 Harley-Davidson CVO Limited.
Dorna has announced that MotoGP could make a return to Brazil as early as late 2014. The addition of both Brazil and Argentina to the calendar creates a major headache for the schedule. While a 19 race calendar is just about acceptable to the riders and factories, having 20 races on the calendar would start to create severe logistical and technical challenges. It had long been assumed that Indianapolis would be the race to be dropped, but a deal announced on Saturday secured the event for 2014, with talks ongoing about a long-term extension to that deal. The long-term contract with Austin leaves only Laguna Seca as the race which could be dropped.
With all of the prototype seats occupied for 2014 – barring a contractual bust up between Ducati and Ben Spies,…