For a long time, the Daytona 200 was the USA’s premier road racing event, garnering attention around the world. Over…
MotoGP testing is underway in Losail, Qatar right now, as the paddock gets ready for the season-opener in a little over two weeks’ time. As such, we are seeing teams debut their liveries, and none of the unveils are more anticipated than that of Aprilia Racing. The Noale brand has been hard at work developing a brand new MotoGP race bike, and while the name remains, the 2016 Aprilia RS-GP is a completely new machine for riders Stefan Bradl and Alvaro Bautista to tackle. Aprilia says it is using a “narrow” V4 engine, which by definition would mean anything less than 90° in the cylinder head angle. Paddock chatter suggests that the new RS-GP does not share the 65° cylinder head angle of the RSV4 superbike though, which should make for good speculation during the season.
The Spanish Supreme Court has imposed multi-million dollar fines on Dorna Sports and its executives for tax offenses arising out of the sale of shares in 2003 and 2004. The court found that Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta and COO & CFO Enrique Aldama had simulated the sale of shares in order to avoid paying income tax and to receive undeclared dividends from the shares the two men hold. The share purchase was financed using debt held in part by the partners who owned the company buying the shares. Dorna claimed that this was a form of leveraged recapitalization, but the Supreme court disagreed with that assessment. In reality, the Supreme Court ruled, Dorna and its executives were pursuing a means of receiving hidden dividends.
The minds at French builder Lazareth are truly mad as a hatter, and Asphalt & Rubber has published several of their more eccentric designs here on our pages. Lazareth’s latest build takes the cake though. The Lazareth LM 847, which debuted today in Geneva, features the 4.7-liter, 470hp, V8 engine out of a Maserati automobile, with a leaning quad chassis built around it. We generally loath making comparisons of a manufacturer’s design to another’s, but here Lazareth does seem to be stealing from the best. The 880 lbs vehicle is conceptually like the Dodge Tomahawk, which featured the V10 engine from the Dodge Viper sports car. The leaning quad setup looks very similar to the Yamaha Tesseract concept, both visually and technically.
Erik Buell Racing resumed production today, with the first motorcycles from the East Troy, Wisconsin factory set to roll off the assembly line on March 17th. Owner Liquid Asset Partners is touting that the new company – EBR Motorcycles, LLC – has a new multi-year plan, as well as financial stability, and it will begin courting dealerships to carry its line of American sport bikes. For now though, production in East Troy is limited to the EBR 1190RX and EBR 1190SX models, picking up where Erik Buell Racing left off in the receivership process, presumably finishing the models that were left in mid-production when EBR closed its doors. The announcement seems more symbolic than anything, as it is not clear where these newly produced EBR motorcycles will actually be going once they roll-off the assembly line.
Gas Gas has been saved from what seemed like certain death, and to give us a proof of life, the…